176: The New Trend in Chiropractic Wellness Care

Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse Podcast.  

This week’s topic: The New Trend in Chiropractic Wellness Care

The KC CHIROpulse Podcast is designed for Chiropractic professionals ready to elevate their practice to new heights, and is hosted by Kats Consultants coaches Dr Michael Perusich and Dr Troy Fox.  Both docs are seasoned experts in Chiropractic care and business development.  This podcast provides invaluable insights and actionable strategies to help you create a flourishing and sustainable Chiropractic business.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Chiropractic wellness care has changed in the minds of patients
• Why we overthink wellness care for the patient
• The reasons why Chiropractic patients are wanting more care
• The new trend that can explode your practice profits
• …and so much more…

In each episode of KC CHIROpulse, we delve into crucial aspects of building a successful Chiropractic practice, covering topics such as establishing a strong foundation, adopting a patient-centric approach, mastering marketing techniques, achieving financial fitness, fostering effective team building and leadership, integrating technology and innovation, and navigating common challenges in the field.

Whether you're a seasoned chiropractor or just starting your practice, the KC CHIROpulse Podcast offers a wealth of knowledge and practical advice to help you navigate the intricate world of Chiropractic business. Join us on this journey as we explore proven strategies, share success stories, and connect with industry experts to empower you in your pursuit of building a thriving Chiropractic practice.

Don't miss out on the latest insights and expert guidance. Subscribe now and unlock the secrets to taking your Chiropractic practice to the next level. Your success is our priority at Kats Chiropractic Business Advisors.

DISCLAIMER:  The information presented in this broadcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to offer legal, investment, accounting, or medical advice.  Seek the consultation of a professional for advice in those areas. And remember…your results using this information may be different than described.

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Transcript

Dr. Michael Perusich: 0:00

Doctors, have you caught on to the new trend in wellness care? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC Chiro Pulse podcast brought to you by Kats consultants and Chiro Health USA. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich. I'm joined with my cohost, Dr. Troy Fox. Troy the, this is going to be probably my favorite topic ever to talk about, because. If you haven't latched onto this in practice, if you hadn't noticed this yet, this is going to be the biggest nugget gold mine of the year. If you listen all the way through this podcast. So I'm going to tee it up. I'm going to let you take your new driver and smash it down the fairway. All right. Okay. You ready? Yep. So there's a new trend and we're seeing this all across the country. Troy, you've seen it in your practice. I've seen it mine. We see it everywhere and it's happening. And I see so many doctors missing out on this opportunity. Your patients. All right. Are you listening? Your patients want to come in more often. Boom,

Dr. Troy Fox: 1:02

we're done. Thanks for listening today. Just had a patient this morning and sometimes we read our patients and so I had a patient come in this morning, his wife had been a weekly patient of mine for over a year. And that's her cadence of care and she loves it. She's not going to change it. He hadn't been in since I had bought the practice and the doctor that transitioned out left when she left, he quit care. So she said, I think you need to get some care. So he comes in. It's been about 9 months. I do an exam on him today. I'm talking to him and he's he's explaining what had happened before, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense, what he talked about, but that's either here or there. It was just like a lack of education about what chiropractic really was and what it did. But what he did know is that chiropractic made him feel better and he stayed functional. And so wait a minute,

Dr. Michael Perusich: 1:54

wait a minute. That's a newsflash. Chiropractic care makes you feel better.

Dr. Troy Fox: 1:58

Yeah, I love it. So here's what happened. I'm soft shoeing into the sink. Cause here's a guy that hadn't been in nine months. I'm thinking, is he really going to follow my care recommendations? And I respond by saying, Hey, I know your wife's been getting weekly care. I know it's been a little while since you've been coming in. So I'm thinking I'm going to soft shoe into this. We may not need to see you every week or even other week, every other week, it might be three or four weeks would be a good cadence of care for you, but we'll do an exam and take a look and see what's going on. So I do an exam on him. I adjust him. And lo and behold, he looks at me and he goes, I think what I'm going to do is just schedule on the same schedule as my wife, I'll just start coming in weekly. And so he didn't even give me the opportunity to trip over my own feet and say gee, what do you think? We could probably see you once a month or once every three weeks or yeah, because I would have made a recommendation based off the fact that he hadn't been seen in a while thinking that maybe. He wasn't going to be comfortable with one time a week care. And he jumped right in the middle of it and basically said, here's what I would like to do. And that's a really good lesson for me as well. That if I'm really smart about what I'm doing. Maybe I offer a few different options for care because what we're seeing and some of this has been driven actually by a franchise chiropractic a little bit because what we're seeing in franchise chiropractic is they're offering what memberships that allow you to come in two times a month and get adjusted. And people are jumping all over it. It's become a really big trend in chiropractic. People are using it for lifestyle wellness.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 3:47

So we started doing this like 10 or 12 years ago in my practice. And I realized one day that. If I think for the patient, I might not create the same thought process the they had, and this happened totally by accident. Here's what happened one day. I made a recommendation. I was told patients, I gave him a range. And when I wanted to see him back, I didn't say four weeks. I said three to four, for example. Yeah. And then my staff would back it up and they'd start, offering at the three week point. Marissa stand at the front counter and I could hear this conversation from my adjusting room. I'm in with another patient goes up, says Doc, let's see me in 3 to 4 weeks versus says, great. I've got so and so open and he said, can I come in sooner? Yeah. And it was like, not a light bulb went off for me. It was like a rocket blew up over my head. I'm like, Holy cow. I just realized I'm talking patients out of coming in maybe when they want to, which may be a different schedule then. And it's not always further out. And then, so I began experimenting. I started instead of my usual maintenance cadence of three to four weeks, I started two to three and everybody was choosing two. And then all of a sudden when people are on every two weeks, now they're telling us, Hey, can I just come in every week? Can you build a practice pretty darn quick to holy smokes? The practice just blew up.

Dr. Troy Fox: 5:15

And the thing is, if you're running a cash practice where it's an agreement between you and the patient, it works really well because you and the patient are making this decision. You don't have to worry about whether an insurance company says, is your care medically necessary? What you're looking at is a lifestyle wellness program. Now, chiropractors, sometimes what I see and we all get caught up in this is that 1 percent of patients that you'll see on Facebook. I saw a comment the other day on Facebook and this, I laughed when I saw it, it was a chiropractor asking. What do you look for in a good chiropractor? And of course, one patient says, Hey, I'm looking for somebody that does a good manual adjustment. Okay. Great answer. The next person says I'm looking for somebody that's not trying to create a career based off of my care. In other words, somebody that keeps recommending care for me. And I think what we see a lot is we become gun shy as chiropractors because of that 1 percent that says. I don't understand chiropractic care. I don't care to understand it. And I don't want to come back in and see you. I want to be in a sickness care model where I wait until I hurt really bad. I come in one or two times, you adjust me and then I disappear again. That 1%, a lot of times drives our care recommendations to the whole population of patients. And that's not fair to them. And it's also not fair to us in our practices when we have so much to offer to our patients. I think it's amazing sometimes when patients take the reins and tell us, Hey, doc, you are good at what you do is helpful for me. And it keeps me functioning in my daily life. And I want to come see you on a regular basis.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 7:01

All right, everybody, I'm going to tell you right now, grab some popcorn or something because we're going to be here for a couple of hours because I can see all these rabbit holes opening up. So hang out for just a minute. We're talking about, we're talking about new trends in wellness care and chiropractic. We got to take a quick break for our sponsors, but we'll be right back. We're going to pick up where we left off of. I'm going to dive into a different rabbit hole here in a second too. We'll be right back.

7:26

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Dr. Michael Perusich: 8:25

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the KC Chiropulse podcast brought to you by Kats Consultants and ChiroHealth USA. We're talking about new trends in chiropractic wellness care. Troy, you pegged it right before the break. Patients sometimes want a different cadence of care than we're willing to give them because we've gotten a little gun shy because of that 1 percent of patients out there who don't get it, who don't understand our why, who don't understand our purpose. And so we back off of our recommendations of care sometimes for the wellness patients. Now I'm not talking, we're not talking about the acute care patients that you might be billing to insurance. Totally talking about wellness patients aren't on insurance. We're playing the clinically appropriate game, not the medically, medically necessary game. So that said, I always ask this to myself, what's good for the patient. If it's good for the patient, it's good for the clinic. Then it's a win, right? Okay. So ask yourselves, doctor, how often do you get adjusted? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet that very few of you out there are on a four to six week schedule. Oh, God forbid. Yeah. You might get behind once in a while and, oh God I didn't have time to go to my buddy and get my adjustment this week or, have another doctor in the office adjustment or whatever that happens. I get that. But how often do we get adjusted? How often does your staff get adjusted? I know I had staff Russell shoot me, but she got adjusted like every other day. Why not

Dr. Troy Fox: 9:59

staff have the best jobs in the world. They get adjusted usually more than us. Doctors do, unless you have another doctor in the office and you guys are adjusting each other frequently. Like for me, I'm once a week because that's my opportunity. I'm sometimes jealous of my staff, but when given the opportunity and yes, there isn't a time or money issue because they're right there in the office. But we see that patients, because our staff are patients. We're patients that we desire more chiropractic care. Not

Dr. Michael Perusich: 10:29

less. Sometimes it'd be a couple of weeks before I get adjusted every once in a while because, Patrick and I traded and he was hour and a half away. But so if our staff, this is what I realized if our staff is getting adjusted often and we're getting adjusted often to our patients know that. Do they know there's a benefit to that? Can we turn on, can we flip on the light switch for the patients and say, guess what? Chiropractic care is available on a weekly basis if that's what you want. Chiropractic care is available twice a month if that's what you want. Here's the crazy thing about that. It's truly magical. When you tell patients that they're like, Oh thank goodness. I've been wanting to come in every week. It's the craziest thing. It goes totally against what we think. And this is where we have to stop thinking for the patient. It's just like poverty complex. We get appointment book complex and we're afraid to tell the patient that they have that opportunity to come in more often when they're on wellness care. Again, they're on acute care, be the doctor, have doctor authority, tell them what they need. But if they want to come in more often for wellness care, because you said it, Troy, just a little bit ago, and this is why I pointed it out. Chiropractic feels good. It makes you feel good. It makes you function better. I read a study a long time ago and don't ask me to quote the study. I don't remember. It's been a long time, but there was something like a 20% Increase in muscle power after an adjustment. What athlete doesn't want that? What weekend warrior doesn't want that? Hey, it's softball season doc. I want to come in every week and get that muscle power going.

Dr. Troy Fox: 12:14

Muscle activation. I think I remember Chris can't talking about that. Actually. I think that was, I think that was on purpose back in the day, which, a lot of us care probably remember Listen to Chris, tell us all the great research stuff. What's really interesting about that is, is we operate with our foot in both worlds. We operate in the world, sometimes in

Dr. Michael Perusich: 12:34

our mouth too.

Dr. Troy Fox: 12:35

Yeah. So we operate in sickness care. And in wellness care, and a lot of times what happens is because of the small amount of public perception that either doesn't understand chiropractic care or doesn't get it, what we end up doing is we operate in that sickness care model more than we should, right? We should be operating in that wellness care model and taking care of those patients that want to be well, yes, we do have to do some acute care, but I would say the majority of our practices should be wellness care, not sickness care. And so as a result, we have to rewire our own brains to quit thinking from that model. But the other reason we think in that model is because we want to be accepted. Quite frankly, what we're learning is we're accepted for what we do well, and that's wellness care. People love to stay well. And I think the public is finally, their BS detector on the top of their forehead with the advent of Dr. Google and the internet became much bigger. And as a result of that BS detector becoming much bigger, what they realized was chiropractors are really good. Talk in the talk and walk in the walk when they started talking about wellness care, because nobody else really offers that. This is

Dr. Michael Perusich: 13:53

when the pandemic helped

Dr. Troy Fox: 13:54

us. Yeah. So when you go to physical therapy, you're in more of what I'd call sickness care model. You've got a body part that needs. Rehabbed, it needs physical therapy and you go in and they do that and they have a cutoff date. That's not wellness care, sickness care. When you go to your medical doctor, you go in, you tell them what's wrong, they write a prescription or send you to a specialist or whatever they may do. That's all involved in sickness care. The whole model is sickness care. Then you got chiropractors that are wellness care. We've got patients that embrace wellness care sometimes better than we do.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 14:30

They do. They do. Here's another thing that I found in my practice. I found that patients that stayed away from the practice for six weeks or longer, six weeks or longer, they didn't come in, had a much higher likelihood of dropping out of care and being gone for longer periods of time than the patients who came in On a much closer cadence of care, the patients who came in every one to two weeks, hardly ever dropped out three to four weeks minimal. But by the time you got past six weeks, it started getting huge. And so if you have a retention problem in your practice, you might think about what's my recommendation for maintenance care? What am I telling patients for wellness care? How often they should come in? Or what am I telling them? How often they can come in?

Dr. Troy Fox: 15:26

And if you have a reschedule problem, it's the same thing. When you start seeing a lot of patients that are missing their appointment at four weeks and they reschedule out to five or to six, or they're three weeks and they reschedule out to four out to five. We see that and it always happens with that bigger gap. When you see your one to two week patients, they hardly ever, and if they do, they're usually profuse profusely apologizing. Oh my gosh, I've got to miss my appointment here in two days. Do you have something on Thursday instead of Wednesday? They're not gonna miss that two week appointment. There's something about being functional and well, that people desire to stay with, and I agree with you. We've talked about this before. Once you get beyond about three weeks, people forget how good they felt.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 16:17

They, that's exactly what I was gonna say. And

Dr. Troy Fox: 16:18

it's an innate feeling. Sometimes it's not. I'm pain free. We, I have patients that are never out of pain. I have patients that have chronic pain responses. Some of them are fibromyalgia. Some of them, you name it. We all have them. Somebody's had a, 20 car. I had somebody that had 20 different car accidents that came into me the other day. He says, I've never been out of pain, but I love chiropractic and it makes me feel better. And I want to get on a bike. Yeah, you might want to try a bike. I don't know. That might be even more dangerous, but when we look at our patients, that cadence of care innately. People are finding out that they feel better inside. They may not ever be pain free. Some of them will, but they don't understand when they get out past three and four weeks that their brain is wired differently at that point when they're getting care, it's really not to stay functional.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 17:13

Yeah. And what about the patient that doesn't have pain? They don't have anything. They don't have any source. Other than their innate intelligence, they don't have any source like, like a pain to tell them, Hey, chiropractic care worked or it didn't. Hey, I felt better. I didn't. If you don't have pain, you don't necessarily feel any different after a chiropractic adjustment pain wise. But you know that you function differently, and if you're getting that on a more frequent basis, man, the power of that innate inside physiological process is just boom, it's powerful.

Dr. Troy Fox: 17:49

And I think sometimes you have to think as well, docs, that if you are speaking a language of pain relief and you're speaking a language of first aid care. You may want to work on changing your dialogue a little bit and reroute it more towards wellness care. You and I've talked Dr. Paroosh about what we talk about with the patient on the first visit. I talk about wellness care on day one. Yeah. I don't care if you've ever been under chiropractic care or not. We talk about what our goals are in our office. Now, those may not be your goals at this point, but we're going to talk about what the goals are, because I'm very passionate about people getting well and staying well.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 18:27

Oh yeah. That's built into the treatment plan.

Dr. Troy Fox: 18:29

And so rather than me talking about how do you feel today? Oh, you feel better. Okay. Now I'm dead ended myself. I've got no place to go,

Dr. Michael Perusich: 18:37

but

Dr. Troy Fox: 18:38

if I'm talking about long term function and a term that I like to use is we're trying to, we're trying to win a marathon, not a sprint. How long do you plan on living? If you, what's the average lifespan of a male in the United States? What is it? 70 something or 80. I don't know, 74 or something, 74 women are 79 point something. It's crazy really how short our lifespans are that's the, that's the mean, but as we look at it, you're trying to win a marathon to get to the end of that marathon. And the other terminology I like to use because I got a lot of farmers and a lot of blue collar. Patients in my practice. I always say, do you do you wait to grease the bearings when they start squealing or do we do it before then? And they get it. I've had a lot of farmers that have never gotten wellness care before that are adamant about getting wellness care now, because they understand why they're getting wellness care, so you. So if you have verbiage to reach every kind of patient, whether they're a mechanic, whether they're a farmer, whether they're a software programmer, you have to have something to reach them that makes sense to them. And if it makes sense and they can latch on to it and identify with it, It makes sense for them for the longterm as well. You can't just say if I adjust you every week or two weeks, you're going to innately feel better and you're going to follow my recommendations for life. I think they have to want to be there and they have to buy into the program. In other words, they have to have a reason why they're doing it. It has to be for them, not for you.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 20:16

Yeah, that's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. So docs, listen up. You may want to listen to this podcast again. This is the new trend. So love it or leave it. This is the new trend and we're seeing it all over the country. You're seeing it as Troy mentioned. We're seeing it with the franchise businesses. We, we. I saw it in my practice tree. You've got it going on in your practice. Just try this at your practice. And I think you'll be amazed. And if you want to know more about how to implement this kind of stuff and how to get the dialogue and the communication strategy down, cause you've got to have your staff involved in that too. Touch base with us. And if you haven't done so yet, go to cats consultants. com and check out everything that we're doing to help doctors have these hugely profitable and successful practices. We've got all kinds of free downloads and things on there. So plug in with us. We appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys. If you want to do a breakthrough call and just talk about your practice, we do those for free. Just go to catsconsultants. com at the very top. You can click on my calendar. You can go to my calendar directly and schedule yourself on there. So let's chat about your practice and how we might be able to help might not be able to, and that's fine too. Let's still talk about your practice. Dr. Fox, anything to add,

Dr. Troy Fox: 21:28

I think this is my new trend from now on every week. You're going to hear this love what you do, and this is a great way to get back to loving what you do. You want patients in your practice that love the care that they're receiving. So to love what you do, your practice needs to be surrounded by what you're passionate about.

Dr. Michael Perusich: 21:46

Amen. Good point. All right. On that, we're going to, we're going to leave you guys. So be sure to tune into the KC Chiro Pulse podcast every week brought to you by Kats Consultants and Chiro Health USA. We appreciate you listening and be sure to subscribe.

22:00

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