TEAM TIPS: Increase your earning potential
By Susan Hoy

Chiropractors and their assistants have one great characteristic in common: A great desire to help others. Sometimes, the best way to help others is to help yourself. You help others by staying in business.

Think of your business as a corporation. Profitability is crucial to keeping your doors open, earning a living, and having satisfied employees. Here are some strategies for boosting profitability and staying in business.

• Charge for what you do. If a service is worth doing and will help your patient return to health, then it is worth charging for. Study a chiropractic codebook and become familiar with procedure codes. Do not depend on a staff member to do this. Your reputation and license are at stake. Stop giving services away. If you do not charge for a service, you are indicating the service has no value. If a service has no value, stop performing it.

• Collect what is owed. When you charge for a service, expect to be paid. Make sure your front-desk assistant is collecting from patients either in advance, or at very least, every visit. Train your staff to value chiropractic care enough to ask for payment in a confident, professional manner. Payment should commence from the very first visit. Additionally, collect what is owed from insurance. You must have a methodical approach to billing and collecting.

• Be efficient and organized. Labor-intensive and redundant procedures overburden your staff. When you have time-consuming paperwork, the focus is on paperwork and not patients. When this happens, your patient base decreases significantly. Simplify and automate your processes.

• Be productive. Time management is necessary — in both patient care and office work. Fewer employees are needed when your procedures are efficient and your staff is well trained. In a productive office, there is never time to read a magazine or make personal phone calls. Make a list of things that can be done when there is a spare minute or two. Staff job descriptions are essential.

• Manage your time. Organize your day. Book your appointments in clusters so you don’t have patients arriving at all times. Make time in your schedule for staff meetings, staff training, staff education, marketing calls, reports, and other productive activities.

• Share your vision. Your staff cannot help you with your goals if they do not know your goals. Most staff members have a desire to help if they are empowered. No team can win if they do not know the desired outcome.

• Set goals. There can be several kinds of goals and many different rewards. The best benefit of setting goals is that it gives everyone on the team the desire to succeed. Goals should be reachable with a bit of a stretch.

• Reward your team. Hard work deserves reward. Begin with saying thank you. From the staff’s standpoint, those words are the most satisfying. Beyond that, monetary bonuses and other special rewards are important to keeping a happy, satisfied team.

It is important to visualize success, and just as important to visualize your office the same way a corporation would. The difference is that you are the CEO, CFO, manager and team member. Profitability and success depends on “all” of you.

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.