Pricing your services

New practitioners often struggle with the issue of setting fees. How do you know what to charge? The first step in determining your fees is to find out what the range of fees is in your area. To do this, you can:

“¢ Ask other chiropractors directly. Some will be very open and others won’t. You just need a couple of people to tell you what they charge.

“¢ Check with your state chiropractic association.

“¢ Find out Medicare limits on some items.

After you have gathered information, the next step is to determine your own prices. You have several choices:

“¢ Lower than the average. Some new DC’s figure they must charge less because they don’t have the experience of other doctors. But setting your fees lower to get patients to come to you is not a great idea, for several reasons:

“¢ If patients are coming to you because you are cheaper, you may lose them if you raise fees later.

“¢ If patients truly value your services, your fees shouldn’t matter.

“¢ If you don’t value your education and skills, why do you expect them to?

“¢ Higher than average. This is the “we charge more because we are worth it” justification. But are you really worth it? What are patients getting from you that they can’t get from other DC’s? If you work on providing high value services, setting higher fees might be appropriate.

“¢ Right about average. This is the easy solution and it won’t take you too much time to think about. You can always change fees later.

The key to setting prices is giving people value and continuing to re-affirm that value. If people feel your services are valuable to them, they won’t argue about price. You have to discuss the value of chiropractic at every visit, not every third visit, so that your patients don’t forget what it is you are doing for them.

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