Kats Chiropractic Consultants CHIROpulse

199 Do you know the top things your Chiropractic staff needs?

• Marisa Mateja

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Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse Podcast.  

This week’s topic:   Do you know the top things your Chiropractic staff needs?

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 Marisa Mateja.  Dr Perusich and Marisa are both seasoned experts in Chiropractic 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:

  • The top things your staff needs
  • What are the tools your staff needs from you
  • The top systems your staff needs
  • Why staff needs ongoing training and development
  • Why communication training in your practice is so important
  • …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 personalized 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, and represents the opinions of the speakers.  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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KC CHIROpulse Podcast. Helping Chiropractors keep their pulse on success. Thanks for listening.



Dr. Michael Perusich:

Doctors. Do you know what the top five things are your staff needs? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC Chiro Pulse podcast. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich, your host, and I'm joined by my co host, Marisa Mateja. Marisa, you and I, we, we not only talk about this, but we live this a lot, especially with our clients. And there are very specific things that we hear from staff all the time that they want, things that they need. And these are, these are things to make them better employees, more efficient at their jobs and really become. Partners in the practice with doctors. So let's talk a little bit about that. Cause we kind of have the five things that we know they need.

Marisa Mateja:

Yeah. So I would, I would say this is, these are the things that make them not only a strategic partner, but it makes them an, a player on your team. Right. So we, we all want a players. We don't want B, C, D. We won't even go any further. We, we want those A players on our team and to get them there, you know, we hear often and we've kind of compiled what they all tell us. So I would start first with just the tools, the tools to make sure they can do their job. Make sure they can have access to training, those kind of things. Funny enough, I hear this one a lot. Well, I can't do the training because my computer doesn't have speakers. I mean, not only is that hindering them, but there are also ways around that. So Keep in mind, you know companies like ours, we have our own app. You can put it on your phone. You can put an earpiece in, you can, you know, there's so many ways around. I don't have a speaker to me. We just have to make sure we've got the people that are willing to do those trainings and those things on our team. So give them the tools to see if they can perform and do those things once they've learned them. So tools are number one, I would say, in my opinion, and that goes. Farther reaching than just a, just a speaker on a computer. I'm talking, make sure you have the right software, make sure you've got credit card processing machines that are, you know, up to date to make sure you've got all of the things that you need. They need good phone system, good texting, good online scheduling, you know, all of the, the things, make sure they've got the tools that they need.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yep. Yep. And make sure you're giving them permission to have time to do training. And those kinds of things that you're giving them the time to access those things, not expecting them to do it at home, you know, they need to be doing it in the office. So set aside the time. And a lot of that stuff doesn't take very long.

Marisa Mateja:

No, I mean, we keep our trainings to five to 10 minutes, maybe. So realistically, I bet I could find five or 10 minutes in every practice out there per day. You know, do a training a day that, you know, if it's something that you know, watch it again, I mean, that's always my philosophy on it because you're going to learn something else. I don't know how often. You know, we take our trainings and reevaluate them. Are they, do they have all the information in them? Are they up to date? You know, all of those kinds of things. We're constantly improving upon those things and putting information out there for everyone to stay current. So don't think just because they watched it once they're experts, because there may be new information.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Right. And what are you doing to reinforce the information? You know, it takes people about seven times to hear something before they actually can and will act upon it. So, you know, just hearing something once it's probably going to get lost. So whatever kind of training and information your staff is involved in during the week, those, those are great things to bring to your staff meeting. Everybody talk about it together. That just helps reinforce it.

Marisa Mateja:

So, so I would say tools are one, training's number two, right? So taking training and expanding upon that just a little bit. One of the areas that I have heard from staff is we don't have enough knowledge of chiropractic. That to me is something that you docs can handle, right? You should be able to handle that. Show them. cases that you're working on. Talk through what you're doing with that patient. What is the treatment plan look like? What are the other therapies you may be doing? Is this a patient that needs to have an MRI, a CT, x rays? Is this a patient that needs a referral out for physical therapy? Or, you know, is it not a chiropractic patient? What are, what are you learning from that patient? patient's case and are you sharing it with your staff and your CAs and, and your team to be able to really talk through those things and have them learn along with what you're doing. When you do that, the biggest thing is they learn communication skills through that. for your patients.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah. So they can now connect better to the patient because they understand the patient's condition. But now they're also educated to the point where they can help watch for opportunities of conditions like that walking in your door or when they're out at the grocery store or out in the public. Now they're keyed into those same kind of things that we as doctors see all the time.

Marisa Mateja:

Yeah. And I want to, I want to just preface this with we're not suggesting they talk about Conditions with your patients or those kinds of things, but they may be able to identify different things that are going on with patients and be able to come back to you, or they may be able to talk to your patients in a deeper level of, have you talked to the doctor about that? Wow. That that's something that they help with, you know, it gives them that.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yep. Let's give a great example. A great example is the patient that walks in the door. They're 30 minutes late and right out of their mouth. They say, I'm so sorry. I'm late every morning. When I get up for the last couple of weeks, my heel hurts so bad. It takes me forever to get around. I didn't think I was going to get out of the house today. Well, what is that? Well, it's probably plantar fasciitis, right? If your staff recognizes that, then they can say, Hey, have you talked to the doctor about that condition? We might be able to help. And, you know, that may be on the heels of you just explaining to your staff that, Hey, we treat things other than just neck and low back pain. We treat conditions like plantar fasciitis, knee conditions, you know, teach them those kinds of things so that they see those opportunities when they walk in the door. Cause your patients, a lot of times won't make that connection. If your patient started with you as a low back patient. They don't know you treat heels. They don't know you treat anything other than the lumbar spine.

Marisa Mateja:

And they may not know that you may have services in your office that are specific for those things. You know, think about the therapies that you may offer in your office. Do you have laser? Do you have ultrasound? Do you have shockwave? What are, what are the things that you have in your practice that may help with different conditions? other than what they came in for. So they may not even be aware that those are possibilities in the practice. So now we've just opened up a door with a patient to see you for possibly a new condition, a new treatment plan, and they're not going where? To a medical doctor or somebody else that takes them away from your practice when you can easily, easily help them move forward with that condition.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yep. Yep. It's a perfect example. So we need to take a quick break and hear a quick word from our sponsor, but we're on, I think, number two of five points that you want to really key in today about what your staff needs from you. To be able to do their job even better. So quick word from our sponsor. We'll be right back.

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Dr. Michael Perusich:

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the KC Chiro Pulse podcast brought to you by Kats Consultants and Chiro Health USA. We're talking about the five, the top five things that staff really wants from you to do their jobs better, basically. So Marisa, we we've gone through two of those. One was tools. One was training. What are we classifying as number three?

Marisa Mateja:

Communication.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah, that's a huge one.

Marisa Mateja:

So communication is on every level, right? So I'm not talking just communication with our patients while that's a number one. I'm talking communication with other staff members. I'm talking communication with you as doctors. We're talking communication with insurance companies. All of these communications. Strategies, I will call them all the different types all have to be learned if they've never worked in a chiropractic office before. Wow, they have a lot, not an uphill battle, but they have a lot to learn. Right? So. Keeping in mind those things and making sure that you're constantly working. Do your desert team members follow you around and listen to what you say to patients? Because while you can pick up a ton of information doing that, right? Do they? Know who they're working with, meaning do they know their communication styles of their other teammates? Do they know their personality types? These are all things that factor into how we communicate with people. So knowing those things. are huge. So there's a lot of different things that go into communication that I think have to be addressed.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah, I think part of that, too, is have you created a safe culture, safe communication culture in your practice? You know, we see a lot of practices where nobody talks to anybody because they get ridiculed or put down or whatever. We have to have a safe communication environment, which means everybody's thoughts and ideas have relevance, and we will respect that. Yeah. And I, I'm going to kind of semi quote, John Maxwell in, in his book, five levels of leadership, he talks about the fact that as leaders, it's imperative of us to be pulling our people up with us right behind us. Because if they don't grow, we don't grow and we may never get past. Level two of leaders. You're all mad automatically on level one, because you own the practice. You don't get to level two, three, four, and five without pulling everybody up with you. And I think one of the greatest things that we can teach staff is good communication skills and what that means.

Marisa Mateja:

Communications just so high up on the list of things you have to have to know how to do. We have to know how to communicate with patients. I said that was number one, right? So being able to communicate with them about everything from treatment plan to costs to, you know, why that condition is treatable you know, all of those things factor in. And so really spend time. On communication. I can't stress that enough. And we do hear that from Your staff out there, they do say those are things that we need. We need those things.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

And there's a reason why we weave communication strategies into almost every single virtual seminar that we do, because it's so important. It's really kind of the glue that pulls everything together. I mean, think about a report of findings. If you and your staff can't communicate those treatment recommendations and why they're applicable to that patient, you can't effectively communicate that. What's the patient going to do? They're not going to be a patient. They're going to, they're going to drop out on you. So, you know, everything goes back to communication. So that one's huge. Okay. So tools, training, communication, drum roll. Number four,

Marisa Mateja:

I'm going to go with efficiency. So efficiency is one of those things that gosh, we have to stay up on. So, you know, in our office, I know literally every six months we were either rearranging or adding something or changing something to make our practice more efficient, you know, even from the. it took a patient to walk through the front door to a treatment room. How do we, how do we slow that or excuse me, speed that process up? How do we change and make effect on the schedule by doing little things like that? Right? So efficiency I think is huge and efficiency covers a lot of different things. How the flow in the practice works, how the schedule looks, how Do, do you have the right tools again? That kind of factors back into that one as well. So when I think about efficiency I have a couple of practices, two or three that come to mind who are still using paper for things. Whether it's schedule, whether it's billing, whether it's, you know,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

handwriting

Marisa Mateja:

treatment plans or handwriting notes or all these things, these are efficiency killers. So, in my mind, so thinking through, what are you doing in your practice that keeps you. Up to date and current to truly be efficient for your practice for your patients. We know for a fact patients want to see you be advanced in technology, advanced in those things because they know it affects their time. So I think efficiency is incredibly important to the practice.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Excuse me, it is. And efficiency, efficiency changes over time as your practice changes. So again, a good example, if your practice, if you grow by 10 15 percent in patient volume on an average daily basis, Your procedures need to change along with it. And so if you're finding yourself hitting this capacity ceiling and those kinds of things in that example, it's probably cause you grew and your procedures didn't change along with you. And efficiency also changes every time you change staff people. When you have, whether it's turnover or adding somebody new in, it changes the dynamic of that and it changes the efficiency. So always be working with your team to find those levels of efficiency as you grow over time. Okay. So we're up to four and thanks everybody for tuning in. We're not going to give you number five. We're going to hear a quick word from our sponsors and come back for number five, but were you going to say something?

Marisa Mateja:

Nope.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

That's perfect. Okay. Perfect. Quick word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

Kats Consultants:

Kats Chiropractic Consultants your partner in chiropractic success. We are dedicated with one on one guidance to bring you all your practice management needs. Let's supercharge your practice. Give us a call today.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the KC Chiro Pulse podcast. We're talking about the five top things that your staff needs once whatever to make themselves More effective in your practice. And that's a good thing, right? We want them to want these things, but it's the onerous is on us as the practice owners to make sure that we're making sure that they're getting those things. So Marisa, we've been through four things so far to recap tools, training communication,

Marisa Mateja:

Efficiency.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Okay. So what is number five?

Marisa Mateja:

I firmly believe that goals and future planning are number five. They need to be in the loop. They need to know what they're working for. So the devil's in the details. It's what are we working for? What? What is the next step? How do we get there? And all those other things that we've talked about all come into play for number five. So you have to have good communication. You have to have the tools. You have to have the efficiency and you've got to have the communication and training to be able to get to number five, which is meeting our goals.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yeah, and when it comes to goal setting, if you're not doing goal setting, you should be, and we highly recommend it. But like Marisa said, you've got to get your team involved in that process because they're. In part, drivers of those goals as well. But here's the trick about goals, goals that are too long. So oftentimes in the past, we've been taught to plan out for the entire year, three years, five years, but that's so far out that. It becomes, it starts to take on a feeling of not being reachable, especially in the first couple of months, if you're missing your goal targets. And now every month, the goal is actually growing because you got to make up for being behind. So make sure that you're taking your goals and bringing them down to the shortest timeframe possible. Break your goals down. If you have a patient visit goal, break it down to what you need to see per hour. If you have a collections goal, break it down to what you need to see per hour, because that smaller number is much easier for your staff to hold on to.

Marisa Mateja:

So I, I do think goals are something that they crave, they want, they need, they've got to be able to know. What are we aiming for? What are we going for? Every good business out there has goals, and then they have the strategic planning sessions and the strategies to get there. So using those other top four items that your staff needs really set you up. Well, for number five, which is the goals,

Dr. Michael Perusich:

it does. Yeah. So spend some time really working on your goals and working on goals as a team requires strategic planning. So you really have to set aside some time to really drill into them. And remember goal setting is not a one time set it and forget it kind of thing. It's a living document. It's something you should be looking at and driving every day, every hour. Otherwise, you'll never, you'll never hit your goals and you may still not hit your goals, but you're giving yourself the best shot by driving that process on a daily basis.

Marisa Mateja:

Yeah. I mean, put up a vision board in your practice so everybody on the team can see it. You know, we used to have numbers that we were looking to hit on the back of the break room door and we saw it every single day. We had it visually right in front of us. And it made it real to. Get to it and it was attainable and we did it very quickly because everybody saw it, we were all focused on it and those kind of things. So I'm, I'm a firm believer on vision boards. I'm a firm believer on setting those goals and having the details of what, what we need to do to accomplish where we're going.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Absolutely. And I'll give you a great example, because I like to give examples. But at one point in practice, we wanted to grow our, we wanted to double our practice. And so we, we sat down as a team and figured out what that was and what the steps were. But the trick was, and this is what Marisa was talking about, we put the number that we needed to reach. On the back of the door so our patients couldn't see it, but we saw it every single day and we talked about it every single day and within three or four months, just because we were driving that process all the time, we had our goal. So it's really pretty easy when you, when you drive your goals like that. So make sure that goals are in place, your team is built into them, they understand them, they buy into them, make sure they're short term. And just to go back to the list again, you got to give them the tools, you got to give them the training, they got to have the communication skills, and you have to teach them that or you have to learn it as a team. You've got to create efficiency in the practice. And you got to have the goals. Did I hit them all, Marisa?

Marisa Mateja:

I think you did. Top five right there.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Awesome. Awesome. Okay, everybody. Those are some great tips on how to grow practice from the staff side of your practice, which is hugely important. Remember, we can't do this alone as the doctor. Really great to have a team that's really partnering with you to help you grow that practice.

Marisa Mateja:

Marisa, anything to add? Nope. I think that's great. Make sure you comment, like, share, and you know, tune in again.

Dr. Michael Perusich:

Yes, we really appreciate all of you out there. Our podcast is growing like crazy and it's all because of you, the listeners. So we appreciate all of you go to Kats consultants. com. Check out all the great things that we're doing for clients and give us a call. We'd love to talk to you about your practice. All right, everybody, on behalf of all of us here at Kats consultants and Chiro health USA, we'll see you next time.