136: The Chiropractic Schedule 4 weeks out

136 Four Weeks Out Transcript What's your chiropractic schedule look like in four weeks?

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the KC CHIROpulse podcast brought to you by Kats Consultants, helping doctors keep their pulse on success. I'm Dr. Michael Perusich. And I'm joined today with my co host Marisa Matea, who is our chief operating officer at Kats Consultants, Marisa. Hello. Hello. How are you today? I'm fantastic. I'm fantastic. You know, this whole idea and this is, this is your brain speaking here. It is. It truly is. It's questionable. No, it truly is. It's brilliant in my opinion. What does the schedule look like in four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks? I'm going to go further. What's it look like in 12 weeks? Looking at it. Yeah. Look at it out of here. Looking at it that far out. Can you survive on the revenue that would be created from those patients coming in? Or would your practice just die on the vine if that's what you actually schedule, what you actually see in four weeks or eight weeks or 12 weeks? Yeah, it's an amazing thought process for for a lot of offices to go through. Um, I hear often that, oh, we advance multiple schedule. Oh, we do this that we've got plenty of patients on, you know, but when you really dig into it, they don't have any patients on past two or four weeks. And past that, there's no way then. To predict or trend what the practice is going to do if we're looking forward. Okay, I gotta tell you, my, my palms are sweating just thinking about looking, looking forward and the, and the, and the, and the schedule being empty. Yeah, so we have a tendency to only look backwards. in time. And a lot of times it's in that 30 day cycle that we tend to fall into. So if we're looking backwards and we're looking over a year and we can say, okay, well, our average for the last year was 500 patient visits. Um, if we look forward, then I think it's important to look forward to see What are we trending? You know, is that 125 patient visits a week that should be on? Is it, you know, where are you in the mix? Um, we, we've done this with several offices that I think it's been an enlightening Opportunity for them to look at their practice just a little differently and to see how well that they really do advance mobile schedule because you should be able to look out and be able to predict what's going to happen on the schedule. Yes, it's called forecasting and Businesses and I'm not talking about chiropractic businesses only. I'm talking about any business that is constantly looking forward to project what their future revenues might be that that's how you know where you're at. And while they're not booked revenue yet. Looking forward and being able to see that either provides you with great comfort. We're doing well, or, oh my gosh, we need to put our foot down on the, on the gas pedal and really zoom up some marketing, some patient communication, look at retention, you know, all those things. So it really gives you some great, really quick insight as to where your practice is at. It also puts you in a. And mode of doing things ahead of time versus behind the time. So we're not looking at practice of, Oh, we didn't hit our goal. Now, what do we do? Or our patient numbers are down. What do we do? It's really looking forward and saying, we may not hit our mark next week. What are we doing to make sure that we are going to meet that mark? What are we going to change before we get there? And so I think that's, that's also a mindset shift a little bit, because, you know, if you're always used to looking behind and you're always following up with, um, I'm in panic mode, I'm in, you know, doing things post what has happened versus pre, you know, Yes, reactionary versus proactive. Um, so if you're in that mode of looking ahead and knowing what's going to happen, you know, in practice, I can say I was always looking ahead and I had it down to, I knew on average, how many call ins we had a week, what that meant for our schedule, what that meant for, um, who was going to be on and on above what was already scheduled. You know, you could predict pretty close. I was usually probably within 10 patient visits, typically of being able to predict what our weeks were going to look like. And so I want you to hold that thought for just a second, because I want to pick that apart a lot, but we need to squeeze in a word from, uh, from our sponsor here real quick. Hang on, everybody. We're talking about. What is your chiropractic schedule look like four weeks out or further? We're going to talk more about that when we come back. SPONSOR BREAK All right, everybody. Welcome back to the KC CHIROpulse podcast. We're talking about what does your chiropractic schedule look like four weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks out. And, and I can hear it already. I've already had a couple of text messages actually from doctors about this, not from this podcast, but just because we've been talking about this a lot with our members. What, what do I do if I look out and there's nobody on, so I want to pick apart the process that we always utilized that allowed you to number one, pinpoint within about 10 patient visits where we were going to wind up in a week or two or even further out and what we did, what were the strategies that we used and had in place, the tactics we had in place to make sure that we kept those numbers where we needed them. Yeah, so I think it comes down to, well, there's a lot of different factors, obviously, that go into this. So one, it's I'll say right off the bat, you have to have a good reactivation program that's in place that you're doing consistently. I hear from some docs that they'll do it one month and then they skip three or four months and then they do it again. That needs to be consistent. So the reason it's consistent, and this is a different podcast probably, but this is a marketing tactic. You have to stay in front of people. It's plain and simple. Constantly, they have to know you're there. They have to remember why they came to see you. Those kind of things. So, if you're putting out the right messages, um, you know, that helps. So having a good reactivation program is really important. Number two, I think, is probably just. Knowing what's happening. So if I'm looking ahead as a front desk person and I see that next Tuesday and the Tuesday after are both really light compared to my other days of the week, it's important to take that information back to the doctor back to any providers in your office and let them know, hey, If you have a patient that needs to come in next week, let's direct them to coming in on Tuesday, then we evenly fill out that schedule so that when we have call-ins, when we have, people that call that are new patients that maybe need to get in, if we have an even schedule throughout the week, and we're able to manage that a little bit better, it makes. Additional visits on that schedule a lot easier. So we don't have a day that we're seeing a hundred, you know, it balances you out to make it very consistent, very easy to manage. Um, so I think those kinds of things help. So communication is basically what I just said. Right, right. Well, part of that communication was, you were always great about telling me and the rest of our team at the beginning of every day. You would say, okay, looking out, maybe let's just say it's Monday morning. Okay. Looking out into the week, Wednesday afternoon, there's a few holes here and there. And then Thursday, we've got 15 slots open. Let's fill them up. And now next, then you would hit next week real quick. And you would say, Monday's full. Let's push people over to Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, and we'll look at Thursday next week. But you already knew the numbers. Yeah, I already knew the numbers and those numbers were ingrained every day so that I knew where. Where we needed to hit, where we, what numbers we needed to hit for our totals, what we were looking like for Collins or for patients that were going to be new patients that would fill in schedule time coming up. Um, and, and that's another big factor of this is doctors listening to your patients and hearing what they're telling you and utilizing that information to make sure we're giving them proper care. And so what I mean by that is treatment plans are. Very good. They're communicated to your staff so they can take them and place them on the schedule as needed. You're looking for potentially new conditions that patients are telling you that they have, um, that may warrant, uh, some visits. Okay, so, so hold on there. Here's a classic example. Classic example. We have a tendency as doctors to want to be educating patients all the time. We need to flip that around. We need to be empathetic, which means we're listening all the time. Patients will tell you, they'll give you the cues. It's little things like, Oh doc, I was at the lake last weekend and I must've spent 30 hours on the jet ski. I am so stiff and sore. Oh great. Lay down on the table. You're here for your two week adjustment. And then they get off the table and you say, all right, I'll see you again in two weeks. Classic mistake. How about, Hey, you know, you were pretty tight today and I'm not saying do this if they're not, but, but what if they are, are you really paying attention? Cause they probably are tight. Listen to that information because it may say, you know what? I know you're on again in two weeks or a month or whatever. And here's what I want to do. I want to follow up in two days. And just make sure this is holding because you're way tighter than what you normally are on your wellness interval. So, did I just get another patient visit? Yes. Did I pass the litmus test? If you listen to the podcast, you know the litmus test. Is it good for the patient? Is it good for the clinic? If so, If it's yes to both, then do it. So is that good for the patient to say, Hey, let's follow up in a couple of days, make sure, because they may be sore after the adjustment going, wow, what happened to my feel good maintenance adjustment? I don't know if I'm going to go back or they don't tell you for two weeks and in two weeks they come in and they're worse. And now, now you've got just a big setback and you've got to go through, you know, a whole treatment plan again. How about just adding an extra patient visit in? That's good for, that's good for the clinic and it's good for the patient. So do it. Here's another classic example. Sorry, I'm running away with this. Patient comes in and said, Oh, doc, you know, I spent the, or I this, this weekend doc, I'm going to be cutting down some trees. Okay. Is that. Rough and tumble work. Yeah, it is. Okay. All right. Perfect. Mr. Patient. I want to see it today. And then let's follow up on Monday after the weekend and make sure the trees didn't get the best of you. Or here's another one. Uh, grandmother comes in and she says, I've got all five grandkids this weekend coming up. Oh my gosh, here's what we're going to do. We're going to see you today. And then by gosh, we're going to see you again on Monday or Tuesday and make sure those five grandkids didn't break you down into little pieces. Absolutely. That's good for everybody. It is. Staff has to be involved in this process as well. A lot of times your patients are telling them these things. And so they have to be cued in to knowing when to listen to those things so that they know when to convey that information to you because it may be good for the patient. It may be good for the practice type thing. So paying attention to those things, relaying information to the docs is super important. Um, so The other component of that is going to be your new patients that are coming in. So depending on where you're at in practice and how many new patients you need, you should know that based on what the trends in your practice are and where you're at, uh, with patient visits and those kinds of things and wellness visits. Again, I'm going to say that again, where you're at with your wellness visits, your wellness visits are your repeat patients. And they're the ones that basically. Build the base for practice. So we have to have those repeat patients, just like any business to really succeed. So that's my two cents on that. Right, right. But your new patients are also a big factor in your four weeks out in your eight weeks out, because if you are not scheduling. Those visits out, you're doing a disservice to the practice because we can't trend. We can't look ahead. So I will, I will tell you staff that it is not hard. They're easy processes. If you have the right verbiage for doing this procedure and I highly recommend that if you're not a Client and you need to be give us a call. Um, but we can help with those kind of things and make sure that those basics are really set in your practice to help you. So if you have all those components that we've talked about your communication, your new patient, you're listening for other opportunities. All of those things combined. make what we can really look ahead for. And that's that nice practice that's already got patient visits scheduled and we're not panicked when we look out. And see not very many people on. That's right. That's right. And that's exactly what we do at Kats Consultants. We teach you and help you implement simple little tactics and strategies that make a huge difference in your practice and create. Long term success more than you ever dreamed of. So make sure you check us out at Kats Consultants. com. And you know, when you're there, check out all the different things that we do are different membership levels. We make membership. So completely simple, stupid, simple sometimes I think. Um, and there, there's so many different ways to, to get the information in your hands and then implement it into your practice. So check all those things out, check out our, our free downloads. We've got some great ones out there. Um, and make sure that you're plugging into the Casey Carapult's podcast each and every week. Marissa, anything else to add? No, I don't think so. You know, get your staff involved. Um, I can't stress that enough to make sure that they are helping you and they are your partner in your practice to help you grow. That's so important, um, to make sure you have the right people in place so that you can, uh, hit those goals. Absolutely. All right. Thanks doctors for listening to the KC CHIROpulse podcast brought to you by Kats Consultants, helping doctors keep their pulse on success. We'll see you next time.