November 2002

Use the Gift of Gab To Build Your Practice
Why One-Minute Messages Are Key
By Peter G. Fernandez, DC

Years ago, I learned a very valuable practice-building lesson from a patient. She worked as a receptionist for a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon. After six months of working for this surgeon, she said to him, “Dr. Jones, I’ve noticed you say the same thing to every patient. You are just like a Chatty Cathy doll; someone pulls the string in your back and out comes a ‘canned’ set of words.” He smiled and said, “You noticed!” and explained that after realizing that his practice had deadlocked, he was determined to find the culprit.

“I reviewed everything from promotions, to service, to interior décor, and finally found the reason - me!” the surgeon told my patient. “I realized that when I explained to my patients what I wanted them to do, I would over-talk and use up valuable time with excessive, ineffective verbiage.”

The surgeon wrote down everything he explained to his patients the most, and then reduced each to a clear explanation that patients could easily understand and accept.

“I memorized each one and found that not only was my talk time cut in half, but also my patients did not have to ask as many questions as before,” he said. “This created more available time in my schedule, which acted as a vacuum and was soon filled with more patients.”

This lesson could be instrumental in helping you build your practice. For example, one experienced DC who has built one of the largest, most respected personal injury practices in the country says: “If you want a PI practice, you have to tell your patients about it. Tell them how you are specially trained in the diagnosis and treatment of whiplash injuries, and that you testify in court on behalf of your injured patients. Your patients will start referring personal injury patients to you. If you don’t tell your patients you practice PI, you won’t get their personal injury referrals. It’s that simple.”

The One-Minute Message
Based on this idea of talking to patients about the services you provide, you need to analyze your practice. What is it that you want to tell your patients? Write out your own one-minute messages in clear, easy-to-understand phrases. When you have finished writing your one-minute messages, have someone without health-care knowledge review them for you. Memorize them until you’re able to convey them to patients in one minute or less.

Here are some examples of one-minute messages that will enable you to see more patients in less time, generate more referrals, and help you create a thriving practice:

· Explain chiropractic. “Chiropractic is the science of diagnosing and correcting nerve pressure. Once nerve pressure is corrected, your body can return to functioning normally.”

· Convert a prospective patient’s questions into an appointment. “Yes, Mr. Smith, I’ve had a lot of success taking care of disc problems, but in your particular case, I would need to do an examination on you to determine if you have the type of disc problem I can help. I know what my schedule looks like. I could see you this afternoon, or tomorrow. Which would you prefer?”

· Explain what an adjustment does. “I am putting this bone back in place, freeing up the nerves that are being pinched. When the nerves are free, the nerves will heal and the feeling in your hand will return!”

· Keep patients on schedule. You might say, “Mrs. Smith, to get you well, I must keep your vertebrae in place at all times so that your injured nerves heal. When you miss a visit, your vertebrae slip out of place, pinching and irritating your nerves again, interrupting your healing process.”

· Stimulate referrals. Make “thank you” telephone calls to patients who refer to your office. Also, let patients know that you have a referral practice.

· Discuss patients’ congenital problems. For example, for patients with scoliosis, let them know that their children inherit their internal structures, such as their spine. “You have a curvature of your spine and the odds are your children have inherited the same distortion. I’d like to examine your children to see if they have inherited your spinal curvature. If they have, I might be able to fix their problem before it gets bad.”

· Tell patients about your specialty. Tell your patients about the special technique you use, or the conditions you specialize in treating. Some DCs like to think they take care of all chiropractic-responsive conditions, but if they would make an honest evaluation of their practice, they would find the majority of their patients come in for three or four health conditions. The fact is, we automatically attract patients with health problems that we are the most successful at treating, and simply don’t attract those patients with conditions that we think we are good at taking care of, but aren’t.

· Turn almost every conversation to your specialty. When you are adjusting patients, tell them their subluxation or health problem is “just like” a subluxation or injury that you have treated other patients with in your specialty area of care. For example, if your specialty is sports injuries and you are adjusting the cervical spine, tell your patient, “This vertebrae is out of place, just like the vertebrae that get knocked out of place when people play football. I take care of a lot of athletic injuries. As a matter of fact, it’s my specialty.

I fix a lot of people with spinal vertebrae out of place just like yours.”

Dr. Fernandez is a 1961 Logan College graduate and past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association. Dr. Fernandez has focused on building successful practices and consulting with chiropractors for 30 years. He can be reached at Fernandez Discipline, 10733 57th Ave. N, Seminole, FL 33772; 800-882-4476, drpete@drfernandez.com; or visit his website at www.drfernandez.com