137: The Chiropractic Back to School Schedule

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the KC ChiroPulse podcast brought to you by Kats Consultants, helping doctors keep their pulse on success.

Today, we're talking about how you manage the back-to-school schedule in the chiropractic clinic. I know it's always a hectic time of the year and, uh, Dr. Kalio is with me here today. You guys have heard him on the podcast before he's one of our coaches. And so Dr. Kalio, glad to have you here. Oh and everybody I'm Dr. Michael Perusich, your other host for the day. So everybody glad to be here.

Yeah, let's talk about the back-to-school schedule, you know, as if practice wasn't hectic enough. We got to throw in this, this whole thing called back to school, you know, so there's like three times a year this happens. So you got back to school in the fall, you've got Christmas break, which changes the schedule. And then you've got out of school. And it seems like it's always school that's disrupting the schedule.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, you know, I've got three, three kids that are all in school, you know, at home right now. So our schedule, it's a little bit of the good and the bad, you know, you're saying goodbye to summer and all the fun and a little more relaxing, but at the same time, kind of welcoming routine as school kicks in. You know, at least we intended to see, yeah, you're, you're managing getting kids ready into school and kind of fitting in that stuff, but at the same time, I think patients are getting back to a routine, which then also we tend to see a lot of people coming out of the woodwork, uh, that maybe summertime got away from them and they haven't been in a little bit too.

Yeah. It's always interesting. You can almost set your watch to it. It's about the middle of August. They kind of slow down just a little bit. And then. Middle of September. Boom. Katie barred the door. The dam breaks. It seems like everybody starts coming back in. But and this is testament to your staff, especially because I know them. You've got to really stay on top of it. And you've got to make sure that patients are scheduled out. Even if they call and cancel a schedule, you still have, uh, uh, appointments on the schedule books left so that they're not just falling out. So you really want to manage that part.

And then of course you have to manage the reactivations for the few that kind of sneak out or, or fall out or drop out by accident as well. So you really got to be on your toes during that time frame. Yeah, it's managing your schedule, but also having a, make sure you have some rules in place of those patients that if they have been gone a while, has it been long enough to trigger a reexamination and making sure that your staff is, is kind of screening for that when they call back in and we aren't just throwing them into a time slot and you walk in the door and oh my gosh, you know, you have them. Mary hasn't been in because she had a surgery, you know, eight weeks ago and she fell the other day now and all of a sudden, you know, they're in a five minute time slot when you should have had a re-exam. So making sure we're screening those people, following up and hopefully if the staff's done a good enough job, you know, we've maybe had all of that kind of coordinated ahead of time. Yeah, absolutely. Got to have the right systems in place. So this is a great spot to catch a quick word from our sponsor. And we're talking about how to manage the chiropractic practice schedule when we're coming into the school year. So we'll be right back. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the KC Chiropractor's podcast. I'm Dr. Michael Parush. I'm here with Dr. Alex Calio. We're talking about how to manage the chiropractic schedule during the chaotic, hectic, crazy time called back to school. And Dr. Calio, just so you guys know, he has two locations with his practice. And, um, so I, does that cause double trouble? Uh, not necessarily. So we kind of run the same, you know, we have the same setup, you know, both locations. So you have really tight systems. Yeah, the systems are set up really well. We have a shared database. So we can kind of track between the locations pretty well. Uh, but it all comes down to, you know, have we prepped and kept people on schedule? So we don't see it. We don't see a ton of shifts from summer into fall, other than catching some of those people that maybe in July. June, uh, that, hey, you know, I'm gonna be gone for a while. Vacations. Let's get back on track when school starts. But we've tracked that and we've got those people already pre scheduled out most of the time. Sure. Okay. So let's talk about some of those systems because in my practice, we never really saw it fall off either. But I yeah. I talked to, and so do you, we talked to doctors all day long, you say, Oh, my practice is just decimated this time of year. And a lot of times it's just because they don't have just a couple of those really simple processes in place that really help with that. So let's talk about that a little bit. What do you think is one of the primary keys to making sure that patients Don't fall out of the schedule. Yeah. Well, the first and foremost comes to mind is recalls, reactivations. You know, we recalls, especially, you know, somebody missed an appointment in June. How are you keeping in touch with that? Have you kept in touch with that? You know, are you using an updated tech system? Which, you know, I think we'd agree. Probably everybody should be doing these days, you know, saving your staff time and money, automating some of those things. Um, you know, are you, are you reaching them in the modes that they're using today? Yeah. If we're just calling on the phone or only sending emails, yeah, you're probably missing the boat a little bit or spending way too much time. Or if you're just not doing it at all, somebody disappears and you're not even following up with them. So making sure we're keeping track, getting those recalls and reactivations kind of going, uh, and just keeping, keeping out in front of those people. I think, yeah, there was always a couple of things that we did this time of year, besides what you're talking about. And it. There were just little things to give them an excuse to come in. One would be, um, have you had your, um, younger child, have they had a scoliosis screening? Of course, you know, most of the schools don't do those anymore. So they would come to us with a scoliosis screening or a backpack fitting. You know, what is the, what is the backpack doing to their poor posture? Or my favorite one, because we were a sports based clinic. My favorite one…”Have you had your sports physical yet? Did you miss it at the end of the school year? And now you've gone all summer, and oh my gosh, practice starts tomorrow, and I gotta have my school physical signed off.” Yeah, and sometimes, this can be a good time of the year to teach you, you know, if you're doing some, some, uh, community involvement, the school supply drive, those kind of things, touching base with your local school, what, what kind of stuff do teachers need, uh, and, you know, using that as a tool to get people back in and back on the schedule as well, if they make a donation. It doesn't even have to be, you know, don't give away services, you know, in exchange for that, but just being able to run, you know, a little bit of a, Hey, this is a good thing for our school. I can, Oh, I can go get my adjustment and, and, you know, help the school out. Uh, it's a great way to get people back on the schedule too. Yup. And you just made me think of one thing that I think is really, really creative and works really well for this doctor. But we have a client who at the beginning of the school year, um, when the teachers are getting the rooms and things ready and having all those crazy meetings. He takes a locally baked cake. To the school takes all the forks and the paper plates and everything. And on top of the cake, it's, you know, compliments of, and the name of his clinic and he's done it every year for years and he gets a ton of mileage out of that and it's just, you know, it's just that little presence of, you know, present time consciousness of we're always here, you know, we're thinking of you guys and, um, he gets a lot of teachers coming in and a lot of teachers recommending his clinic. Yeah, that was great. A lot of those. bakeries will do your edible logo on those cakes too. So, you know, if you want to really get creative and blast that on top of it, that's an easy way to do that. Yeah. You know, so this is just a fun time of year to get creative, do some things, think of some things that are going to drive this. Personally, I think this is a great time to drive families into your practice. You can drive sports. Issues into your practice, um, making sure you're staying up with the reactivations and those kinds of things. And here's the good news, even though we're coming into a holiday weekend, which typically cuts a day off of our calendars, while that still happens, this is a long month. It's a true five week month. So take advantage of that as best you can and really stay up on those reactivations, making sure your dropouts are being called using technology, like you talked about Alex. That's huge. If you're not using. Text reminder systems and those kinds of things these days. Um, you're a little behind the eight ball. Well, and to a little bit of that, you know, you talked about with the sports physicals, it's a good time to, to get in touch with the, you know, the, the coaches, the athletic directors at those schools, um, you know, and if you're getting out of the office or, you know, we're starting back up to see doctors getting back out and doing talks, doing those kinds of things again, uh, you know, going to talk to injury prevention and how chiropractic can help with down to the sports teams or to a lot of your, uh, within the school. is your, your PTO groups are usually looking for speakers for their meetings. It's a great time to get out and talk. Scoliosis screenings, talk back, proper backpack, all that kind of stuff within those groups too. Right, right. So there's just some hot ideas for you guys out there listening in today. It's really pretty easy. If you just think ahead a little bit, put some simple systems in place, get a little creative, do some things for the community. You can really manage. What sometimes in some practices is a back to school schedule that, uh, is a little light to say the least. So these are just some simple ways to keep that practice really humming. Alex, anything else? I think we covered it. Everybody's got stuff to go work on. I love it. I love it. All right, everybody. If you haven't checked this out yet, go to Katsconsultants.com. See all the great things that we do to help practices out there. We've got some great freebies on there, some free downloads and so forth. So go check us out. And as always, we appreciate you listening to the KC CHIROpulse podcast brought to you by Kats consultants. We'll see you guys next time.