Issue 6 - May 2003

Team tips by Susan Hoy
Building a bigger paycheck

As I travel around the country, staff members often ask me about the typical compensation of CAs. It is a very difficult question to answer because salaries reflect, in part, regional socio-economics. A CA in New York City will probably be paid differently than a CA in Baton Rouge. The reason for the question: Staff members want to make sure they are being paid competitively.

You can find out the going wage rates for similar jobs by doing an informal survey among members of business clubs you belong to or your fellow chiropractors. (Ask for ranges, not specific compensation levels, to protect employee privacy.) Often the Chamber of Commerce or the local U.S. Department of Labor Job Service office can provide local salary survey information as well.

One thing your staff should realize, however, is that for you to pay them competitively, the practice must grow. A stagnant practice cannot afford to pay higher salaries, incentives or bonuses. If the staff wants to be compensated more generously, then it must focus on practice growth.

How can you help the staff grow your practice? Here are some suggestions:

• Build a team. Employees in successful practices work as a team toward the same goals. As the team leader, share your purpose, mission and vision of chiropractic with your staff and help each team member understand his or her particular responsibility in growing the practice. Conduct staff meetings regularly, list your goals, and discuss and plan how they will be achieved. Get everyone involved.

• Teach your staff to educate. Educating patients is not the sole responsibility of the chiropractor. It belongs to everyone in the office. Foster belief in chiropractic in all of your staff members and teach them to be conversant to answer questions that patients have. A successful practice is one where everyone is educated and educates patients!

• Foster community involvement. Successful practices reach out into the community. Don’t sit in your office and dream about acquiring new patients; go out and get them. Present seminars, conduct screenings, do health fairs and make presentations to businesses and organizations.

• Focus on quality care. Staff members know how to care for patient needs. Coach your staff to provide quality care that anticipates and meets the needs of your patients. Focus on methods of working efficiently and effectively, and teach them to show compassion and concern for patients.

• Develop retention skills. Since it is five times more expensive to get a new patient than to keep one, successful practices work on their retention skills. Those skills include staff education, patient education, patient-tracking techniques, patient encouragement, recognizing red flags, regular progress reports and creating enthusiasm.

• Train to collect. It is commonly known that patients who owe money do not follow through with care. They not only drop out but they tend to speak negatively about chiropractic. Work with your staff to develop collection policies and train them how to enforce these policies. A staff with poor collection techniques will never have practice growth or be able to compensate employees adequately.

• Set and work toward goals. Do you have goals for new patient acquisition? Reactivation? Retention? Collections? Set these goals and make sure that every staff member knows the goal and progresses toward achieving each one.

Develop team and individual action plans that focus on accountability to achieve the goals. And put into place team and individual incentive plans to reward goal achievements.

Find fun ways to compensate your team for helping you with practice growth in addition to salary incentives. Some of these might include trips to seminars, gift certificates, time off, movie tickets and spa visits.

Set achievable goals that can be reached. Practices grow one step at a time and then begin to snowball. Practice growth can be fun and exciting but it does take work and willingness to change. Once you have gained momentum, everyone will benefit and you can compensate your team accordingly.

Some people dream of success while others wake up and work for it!

Susan Hoy is an award-winning team trainer and consultant. She can be reached at 215-674-0130; suzzhoy@aol.com; or through her web site at www.beefitup.net.