Here’s how to avoid them by expanding your practice’s nutritional arsenal.

Practice Killer #1: Not understanding marketing.

The first main practice killer is not understanding marketing. Peter Drucker has been quoted as saying there are only 2 reasons to be in business: number 1 is to innovate and number 2 is to market. I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what marketing was when I graduated from Chiropractic school. And I have fallen prey to advertising, which is much different than marketing. I learned some very expensive lessons over the years and finally have a better grasp of how marketing really works and how to use innovation to fuel your marketing efforts.

Practice Killer #2: Not recommending when given the chance.

The second main practice killer is not understanding we are living in the Recommendation Age. What I mean by this is people want to know and work with health care providers who have “been there and done that” and can filter through all the mounds of information and recommend things to them because they have their best interest at heart, not because they are just trying to sell them something.

Every chiropractor has the opportunity to become the “go to” healthy lifestyle promoter in their community. They just need to understand how to position themselves in that way.

Practice Killer #3: Making it about you, you, you.

This leads me to the third main practice killer. If you don’t have a workable system of delivery that is embraced by everyone in your office, things begin to breakdown and it becomes a function of how many people the doctor can talk to in a day. If it is only the doctor who can help people get what they need, then you don’t have a staff, you have an expensive entourage. And you limit your growth potential.

If you systematically train and implement different strategies to allow your staff to become able to inform and provide guidance to your patients, then you will be able to create a real business, and not just a team of enablers.

Practice Killer #4: Not holding your patents accountable with kindness.

The final practice killer is the doctor’s ability to provide guidance and accountability to every patient. The more tactful guidance you give, the more people you will help.  There are very few people in your practice who are actually  doing everything they need to do to live a long joyful life. If you become the person they can trust to hold them accountable without pointing the health care finger at them, they will listen to you. They won’t always take your advice, but if you remain on their side no matter what, they will trust you and build the long term relationship that you need to grow your practice to your dream.

Overcome the four practice killers with nutrition

Always keep your eyes and ears open to new ideas. Listen to what your patients tell you. Ask them about their biggest problems their having. All of these things can give you inspiration and ideas to innovate and market yourself and your practice.

Try it for a little while, and chances are you’re going to hear a lot of your people voice their confusion about what they should be eating, what kind of vitamins they should be taking, and what foods aren’t good for them anymore. You’re probably fielding some of these kinds of questions already. But what if you answered them not off the cuff, and some of the time, but all of the time, and with purpose?

What if you identified the top four or five nutritional concerns of your patient population and learned what they really needed?

Do it right and you’ll be able to market your practice for more than just spinal pain. Do it right and you’ll be able to make meaningful recommendations to every patient who walks through the door. Do it right and you’ll be able to involve your staff and teach them the processes that allows them to recommend as well. Do it right and you’ll be able to offer support and accountability as you help people to help themselves through healthy and empowering choices.

We recommend that you consider any clinic event held at your clinic to be an internal marketing event with the primary target audience being your current clinic patients.

Start out by planning inexpensive, simple events that have appeal for your patients. Decide what it is that you are trying to accomplish. And whether you need a Big Event or a Simple Event to accomplish those goals.

In an ideal world, a busy clinic could have an event a month. While that may sound like a lot, keep in mind that you don’t need to plan a major event every month. Start with simple, small events to make sure you and your staff can handle them. As you perfect the planning, scheduling, and running of an event, you can expand the event and make it a little bigger or more complex.

By focusing on your current patients, who are a captive audience that can tell you what type of event will appeal to them and are extremely easy to reach since you see them regularly, you ensure the success of your event.

Once you are comfortable with handling an event successfully, you can branch out and turn a clinic event (an internal marketing)  into an external marketing event by asking your patients to bring a friend or neighbor.

Where do get started? Pick one of the four items and start small.

1. Thanking your patients for their support

2. Educating them regarding health topics

3. Motivating them to exercise or eat better

4. Encouraging them to enhance your relationships

Successful marketers understand that seeing things from the perspective of their customers and their target audiences is crucial to their marketing efforts.

Try to see things from the point of view of your target audience. In many cases, what you may think is important—really isn’t.

Too many health care providers see things only as a doctor. They speak in language that may not make sense to their target audience. They focus on things that make sense to them, their colleagues, and maybe even to their staff, but that in many instances don’t mean a thing to their intended audience, that is, their patients.

Put yourself in the shoes of your intended audience. What are their needs? Their problems? What language do they understand? What are their hot buttons? What problems do they want or need solved?

One way to better see things from your patient’s perspective is a patient survey. Visit www.themarkad.com/patientsurvey for a copy of a survey you can use to better see things from their shoes.

Three Bold Concepts

Doctors need to invest the same amount of time, energy and research they made when opening their clinic. Clinic management systems are long-term investments that should serve the doctor’s needs now and in the future. To ensure that doctors are satisfied, they should consider the following three concepts:

What the documentation looks like: This could help the doctor determine if the system is adequate for the clinic. High-quality documentation should include detailed patient records, functionality to allow integration with other office technology, and adaptability to your current practice workflow. It should also be comprehensive and easily understood by anyone reviewing it. A complete documentation program should include comparisons to past history of objective findings, progress graphs, and other key data.

Determine if the system offers more than just digital notes: The information included in a given chart should be more detailed than a series of notes. Technical jargon can lead the doctor to believe that the system will provide true EHR, but if the doctor doesn’t research the product carefully, he may find that the program provides an updated note-taking system. A true EHR is a secure, real-time, integrated information source about a patient. Every document that is housed in a patient chart should be available through the electronic health record and accessible within seconds from multiple departments in your clinic.

An EHR also provides data integration to support billing, scheduling, outcome assessments and practice management imperatives. Unlike simple notes, EHR provides administrative controls, portability, accountability, and data back-up portals as well as the communication mechanisms necessary within the clinic and for interacting with the outside healthcare community.

Find out if the system improves office efficiency: A true EHR documentation system automates and streamlines workflow, improves intra-office communication, and reduces the time it takes to respond to record-keeping issues. The integration that is fundamental to an EHR contributes to increased efficiencies throughout the clinic and provides added support for audit processes and other external reporting requirements. Only a comprehensive system delivers such efficiencies across the entire clinic, and the cost to implement an EHR solution should be evaluated based on how robust the system is. An important note: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 offers reimbursement opportunities for those who implement EHR starting in 2011. Reimbursements will be managed through the Medicare system and can be as high as $44,000. Those who choose to ignore the directive will pay penalties down the road. Such incentives and penalties should make adopting an interoperable EHR as soon as possible a no-brainer.

Adopt with Confidence

Learning the three aforementioned concepts can help ensure that a doctor can adopt an EHR system with confidence. By conducting a comprehensive investigation into a comprehensive system before making a final decision, you will no doubt yield a better result. With the right system, patients will benefit from better quality of care and improved case management. As taxpayers, we all benefit from an overall reduction in healthcare costs and lower incidence of errors thanks to a team approach to patient care that is fully supported by EHR.