September 2002

Creating a First-Class Family Practice
By Eric Plasker, DC

If there’s one thing many chiropractors have in common, it’s their search for the secrets to attracting and retaining a larger share of patients in their communities. One simple and effective way to grow your practice numbers is to adopt a “family first” focus.

Can you imagine the effect it would have on your enrollment if instead of marketing your services to singular patients and their individual health problems, you began to focus your efforts on educating and enlisting entire families into the chiropractic way of life naturally, with no need for drugs?

You will be amazed at how quickly your bottom line will flourish and the positive impact you can have on the health of members of your community when you create a family-focused practice. The secret to truly building your dream practice and serving your community lies not in limiting your scope and focus to one particular type of condition or symptom, but in implementing marketing and office systems that will appeal to multiple generations by meeting the needs of everyone instead of one random family member.

Isn’t it true that you would never think of allowing your own family members to go through life without regularly checking them for subluxations? So, why not begin running our own practices in the same way that we live and participate in chiropractic in our personal lives.

You can start this process of aligning your practice with your personal beliefs with an honest evaluation of your current systems. When you do this, you may discover that one of the reasons you haven’t been attracting families to your practice in the first place is because you aren’t truly “family-oriented” in your philosophy.

To truly maximize your scope and reach in your community, make sure families form the foundation of all of your thoughts, systems, and procedures. It’s a subtle change in orientation and operations that can bring huge returns - one that focuses on the family instead of the individual.

Here are just a few strategic steps that can help you establish a “family-first” practice, so you can immediately begin to increase your market share and practice income:

• Adopt a family-first consciousness. When you communicate the benefits of chiropractic to your patients, speak to them as if they were your own family members. Share with them the reasons why, and ways in which, you and your family members participate in chiropractic - as a lifetime health-care choice instead of just a “quick fix” for fatigued or achy muscles and joints.

Shift the focus of your communications away from how chiropractic can be effective in alleviating unwanted symptoms and toward the huge role that chiropractic can play in health and wellness by boosting the body’s immune system and supporting it in its natural ability to heal itself.

Make this kind of dialogue a daily part of your discourse during your report of findings, health talks, and lectures. Help your patients understand how chiropractic can proactively benefit them and each generation of their family through every stage of growth and development, and you will attract patients who will make a commitment to chiropractic - and to you - in the long-term.

• Institute a family appointment system. You can enroll your staff and patients in the family-first mentality with a few simple questions. When a patient calls your office, always instruct your front-desk personnel to ask: “Are you interested in booking an individual or a family appointment?” Then have them ask, “Is this appointment for treatment of a specific health problem or for general wellness?”

When you and your staff ask these types of pointed questions, you will instantly convey to your patients the broad scope of your services and the various levels at which they can participate in chiropractic care in your practice. Remember, don’t schedule appointments for family members at different times of the day or week. Put them all on the same day, back-to-back. The beauty of scheduling whole families in one time slot is that you can increase your capacity dramatically, with little more effort than you would expend on one patient. When they arrive, guide them to the adjusting area all together instead of one at a time.

• Arrange your office flow for families. Do an assessment of your daily visit procedures. Are your current systems designed with the goal of serving one person at a time, or do you need to alter them to cater to multiple patients? Is your adjustment area large enough to accommodate a whole family? Make sure you have adjusting tables for both children and adults. Have all of the family members lying face down, relaxed and ready to go, as they wait for their turn.

• Offer family-oriented fee systems. Once you establish efficient office procedures for families, you will find that it takes about the same amount of time to adjust a family of four as it does to adjust just two individual patients. If, for some reason, you discover you are not able to adjust multiple family members in this timeframe, do not proceed with implementing a family fee system.

Have each family set up in your computer system under one account, so checking in and out will be as effortless as possible. Remember, you should always implement internal family-oriented efficiency systems first, before you adopt a family fee system. Once you become efficient in both your adjustment procedures and your financial structure, your practice income has the potential to increase significantly, while your cost-per-visit drops.

• Fashion your marketing messages for families. Many chiropractors mistakenly choose marketing materials that focus on how chiropractic can provide relief for an assortment of symptoms. They unconsciously end up targeting “conditions,” instead of people, and limit their patient base to the individuals who have these ailments.

When selecting your marketing strategy, remember that the type of patient you attract is going to mirror the message that is in your print or broadcast material. Warm up your marketing with messages that talk about “people,” instead of sickness and symptoms. If your marketing uses verbiage about car wrecks and whiplash, you are going to attract people who have this history, and who will likely “be history” in only three to 10 office vists, after their symptoms subside.

However, if your marketing emphasizes wellness and the long-term positive impact chiropractic can have on health throughout every stage of growth and development, you will start attracting entire families who are willing to commit to chiropractic for a lifetime.

Brand your care plans as “family wellness” in support of this modern wellness philosophy. Have photos of families hanging in your office and a display board of family-oriented success stories to motivate and inspire your new and potential patients with the message that chiropractic is indeed a “family affair.”

There has never been a better time to practice chiropractic or impact our nation’s healthcare than today. Use some of these strategies and systems to build a first-class family practice and soar into abundance as you spread health and wellness in your community.

Dr. Plasker is a chiropractor and founder of The Family Practice, where chiropractors are uniting to lead family healthcare. Nationally recognized as a speaker and educator, Dr. Plasker is best known for his LCFE™ (Lifetime Care For Everyone) and family practice visions. He can be reached at The Family Practice at 866-LEAD-DCS (532-3327), ext. 105, or visit the company’s website at www.thefamilypractice.net