Kats Chiropractic Consultants CHIROpulse

219 Are you paying for results, but not putting in the work?

• Marisa Mateja

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Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse Podcast.  

This week’s topic:  Are you paying for results, but not putting in the work?

The KC CHIROpulse Podcast is designed for Chiropractic professionals ready to elevate their practice to new heights.  This week, the show is hosted by Kats Consultants’ CEO Dr Michael Perusich.  Dr Perusich is well known as one of the top influencers in Chiropractic business management.  This podcast provides invaluable insights and actionable strategies to help you create a flourishing and sustainable Chiropractic business.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • What are the risks in managing a Chiropractic practice
  • How these risks can hurt your profitability
  • Why the risk-reward continuum needs to be in balance
  • How to recognize the risks in your practice
  • …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.



Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the Kats Consultants CHIROPulse Podcast
When you are ready we can help.


KC CHIROpulse Podcast. Helping Chiropractors keep their pulse on success. Thanks for listening.



Dr. Michael Perusich:

Did you know that over 50% of small business owners underestimate the liability exposure, and that includes you chiropractors? Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC Chiro Puls Podcast, brought to you by Kats Consultants and Chiro Health USA. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich. I'm your host Today, I'm in the studio by myself and I wanna talk about, I wanna really dive into the untold risks of owning a chiropractic clinic and what we can do to protect ourselves so that we build a thriving practice. Some of the risks are pretty obvious. Obviously there's liability with malpractice. If you hurt somebody, then you put yourself at risk, right? And that's just one of the risks that, we just inherently take. So how do we make sure that we're in good shape? With that, make sure that you are malpractice insurance is up to date, that you've got a good company behind you and you not just accepting the cheapest insurance. One of the other things that I see is the financial risks. A lot of doctors are struggling with overhead right now. Rent is really high. The cost of employees is high, and our fee strategies aren't set to make us profitable. We see this all the time. We see doctors just arbitrarily. Setting their fees or setting their fees to the allowables with insurance companies. So they're leaving money on the table with their PI cases, work comp cases, and their cash side of their practice. So there's huge danger in underpricing your services, and oftentimes I see doctors out there just doing the race to the bottom, just chasing the lowest dollar. I was on Facebook the other day. I saw a doctor advertising a$9 first day, and it was packed. You got an adjustment, you got an exam, you got x-rays, you got a massage, you got you, you got all this stuff for$9. Think about how long it takes to. Make that money back up. And if the patient drops out after the first visit, how much money have you lost? So there's all these hidden dangers in practice and I wanna dive into some more of these. We're gonna take a quick break here, a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

ChiroHealth USA:

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Dr. Michael Perusich:

Hi everybody. Welcome to the KC Chiro Pulse podcast. We're back. We're talking about the hidden risks in practice, and I just mentioned a big one, and that's underpricing your services and just having a, an aberrant fee schedule that doesn't make sense. Your fee strategy should be based on what's gonna make you profitable based on the number of patients and I see a lot of doctors wasting their capacity in practice. So what am I talking about? They want to add a whole bunch of therapies, especially things like and don't shoot me for this, but it's true, they want to add 20 or 30 minutes of soft tissue therapy. You've probably, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably heard me say before that you should be making four or$500 an hour. You should be collecting four or$500 an hour in your practice. And so if you're doing 30 minutes of soft tissue work let's take the 400 per hour. Are you charging that patient$200? Probably not. So we may not be managing our capacity in a way that makes us profitable. I also see a lot of doctors who are getting tripped up on the insurance rules and billing practices, and they're not billing. I. The, the right codes, they're not billing the right modifiers. They're not code pointing and those kind of things. And they're getting bundled on services. They're getting denied on services, and they're just letting it go. Or it goes to patient responsibility and I don't think I wanna bill a patient for that. I don't want make'em mad. And so you write it off, that is absolutely the wrong thing to do. That creates more financial risk in your practice. And then there's operational risks as well. What if one of your team members, one of your staff, what if they're out sick or on maternity leave for a while? How are you gonna manage? Does that affect your capacity? Are you gonna have to see fewer patient visits? What about you docs? What happens if something happens to you? I can tell you a personal story. I blew out my elbow. Playing soccer of all things. And I was outta practice for three months and while I could still go into the clinic and do some things, I really couldn't adjust patients for about 90 days. And it, it was detrimental to our revenue Now. We made up for it. We had a lot of other services and this is one place where you avoid the risks a little bit. We had a lot of non-doctor driven services in the practice, so if I was there, patients could still get rehab, they could still get decompression, they could still get laser therapy and those kind of things. So you gotta really watch the operation itself and make sure that you've got really good systems in place and really good staff. Training in place, that's hugely important. Another place where we find risk is with our new patients and our retention. It's really on the retention side. Our dropouts sometimes are just way too high, and so all we're doing is turning our business into a factory that's turning out people that don't want care from you. They don't want your services, they don't wanna be part of your practice. And what do you think people say when they go out in the community? After becoming a dropout in your practice, they probably don't speak real highly of you. And what we've noticed over the years is that it seems like every patient that drops out tells about 10 people something negative about you. And then, the real risk is that they'll write a negative online review about you. That's another area of the practice where we've gotta watch. What we're doing. So we how do we combat that? We've gotta make sure that we're creating a great patient experience that we provide over the top customer service, that we communicate with patients in a preemptive and ethical manner. And in a way that patients understand care and find value in the care. And we've gotta have a staff, a team that is on point, which requires ongoing training. That's another one of those risks if you don't train your staff. Guess what? You increase your risks of damaging, hurting your practice, decreasing your revenue, losing patients, et cetera. So we've really gotta think about those kinds kind of things. Another risk factor is the emotional and relational risks that we have just from being an entrepreneur. Really. It's not just being a chiropractor, when. When we allow the business to negatively impact ourselves psychologically, then that puts a strain on your relationships. It puts a strain on your staff. It puts a strain on your family. It puts a strain on your kids, your friends, et cetera. And so we wind up becoming isolated in, in, in regard to that. So we've gotta figure out ways to have mentors and people who can not only hold us accountable, this is what a good business coach will do. They'll hold you accountable, but they'll also be your sounding board to help you heal from those times when the practice is getting to you. So we're talking about. The risks in practice and we need to take a quick break. We'll come back, we'll wrap things up.

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. We are talking about the risks in practice, the risks of owning a practice. There, there are many, there are the financial constraints. Sometimes there's, collections. If you're an insurance-based practice, oftentimes we're waiting on records. We've got compliance issues. And one of the big risks today is audits. And so you gotta really watch your Ps and Qs, if you will, if you're an insurance-based practice, because they have AI models that are really watching you. And if you're becoming an outlier and there's a whole bunch of ways you can become an outlier, and that's a whole nother show. But if you're becoming an outlier and throwing up the red flag to the insurance company, you're gonna get audited. And when you get audited sometimes you get through'em fine. I've seen other doctors who. Have big recoup recoupment bills back. I've seen doctors who've gotten penalized from Medicare. Did you know that Medicare has raised the penalty and it's now$15,000 per occurrence? So if you do something wrong 10 times with a patient, you bill inaccurately you, you bill fraudulently. You might even not, you might not even realize you've done it, but if you do it 10 times, that could be$150,000 in penalties. So that's. In my opinion, one of the bigger risks we see in practice today. So how do you mitigate that? We really need to move as many services and as many patients over to cash as we can. And one of the areas that a lot of doctors allow to be grayed out in their practice is the move to maintenance. And there are very few, did I say, very few insurance companies that cover any kind of chiropractic maintenance care. So you have to know what, you have to know what the insurance rules will do, what they cover, and that's part of your verification process. But you also have to do your own internal audits to make sure that you are billing correctly and make sure that you're monitoring your patient treatment plans. And when there's no reasonable expectation for improvement going forward, then there's no clinical ne necessity. There's no medical necessity for billing the insurance company. You have to get that patient off of their insurance and move them over to cash. And there are easy ways to do that. And I know our members out there already know how to do this. So if you wanna. Check out what we do here at Katz Consultants. You can go to katz consultants.com, but more importantly, if you wanna schedule a breakthrough call with us on our website, you can go up in the top right corner, click on Let's chat and jump on one of our calendars, and let's talk about your practice. Where are the problems? Where do you need help? How can we maybe help you? And let's just see if we're a good fit. We do those for free. Remember, we are chiropractors. We had great success and practice and still own practices, and we just wanna make sure that all of you out there enjoy the same successes that we have. So from all of us here at Kats Consultants, and thanks to Chiro Health USA for being one of our sponsors, I. I just want to thank you for tuning in every week. We are growing like crazy, so be sure to like, and subscribe and tell your your friends about the ca, the Chiro Pulse podcast for us. Alright everybody, that's all from us today, so take care. We'll see you next time.