The Chiropractic School Recruitment Requirement Problem

From what I’ve heard, most chiropractic schools, if not all of them, have some sort of requirement regarding the recruitment of new patients to the school.  This factoid is conveniently kept under wraps until you actually start school.  I have not yet found any disclosure of, nor information about, this requirement on any chiropractic school websites.

However, the requirement is real.  Very real.  Your graduation depends on it.  Indeed, you could be a straight-A student, you could rock internship clinic, and you could fulfill all of your other requirements, but if you fail to recruit enough new patients to the school’s clinic, you will likely be denied the eligibility to graduate.

Our Experience With BNI

BNI is a business networking and referral organization.  It typically attracts small business owners, but it also boasts some Fortune 500 members.  Members belong to various chapters of about 25-40 members each.  Each chapter meets weekly at a set time and place, for about an hour to an hour and a half, and everyone gives their spiels, passing out business cards and contact information, all in an attempt to promote their businesses and drum up clientele.

So far, so good.  Kind of…

Does Groupon Have a Place in Chiropractic?

I should’ve written about this long before now, but the need to write this post reached a pinnacle a few days ago.

I learned from a colleague that the Oregon Board of Chiropractic Examiners (OBCE) recently considered adding an exception to its anti-fee-splitting rule to allow DCs to enter into promotional arrangements arrangements such as Groupon and LivingSocial that normally split the cost, to the tune of roughly 50%.

Apparently, they’re receptive to the idea of chiropractic doctors using Groupon and are willing to write such an exception into the laws and codes that govern Oregon chiropractors.

Oh my.

First-Year Learning Curve – Part 2

Wow, that last post started getting long – it didn’t feel like we’d learned that much in one year alone, but apparently we did–and more!  The rest follows below…

Learn to say no–fast.  This applies to salespeople requesting meetings, verifying those bogus “Yellow Pages” directory listings, and local vendors selling fruit out of the back of the pickup truck in your parking lot.

This also goes for patients who continually fail to show up, people who are repeatedly late, people who “forgot their wallet/credit card/checkbook”, or people who will “square up later” once their insurance is verified (many docs will tell a first-day patient not to worry about that day’s initial exam fees for now, we’ll just apply it to insurance – I say do not take this route!).

Horror Stories: Don’t Be That Guy

Chiropractic is a phenomenal healing science.  It’s also an art.  (Repeat after me: it’s a science first; art and philosophy tie for distant second.  But I digress.)

I know there are a bunch of disillusioned naysayers who failed in practice (most likely because they also fail in personality and possibly other attributes as well).  They’ve even set up their own little boys’ club-like internet discussion forums devoted solely to sitting around blaming chiropractic itself for the doctors’ inability to succeed.  Rest assured that as critical as I am of certain practitioners and philosophies, I’m not one of those people.

However, sometimes this Eeyore camp raises some damn good points.

And sometimes, these points are thorns in the chirovangelist’s ribs.

Dr. Brandon Credeur’s Response to Denver’s Channel 7 Witch-Hunt

There are always two sides to every story.  Sometimes the events go down exactly as the prosecution describes; other times there is an inaccurate, sensationalist, and almost deliberately misleading account of twisted facts and comments taken out of context.

In case you couldn’t tell already, what happened to Dr. Credeur definitely falls into the latter.  He was nothing but honest in his interviews (which he was in no way required to respond to) and he cooperated fully.  And in fact, his office wrote an intelligent, professional, factual letter in response to the story.  Here it is…

Echoes of the Sounds of Salesmen

If there has been one recurring theme throughout our day-to-day practice since its inception, it is the multi-headed medusa that is the sales sector.

In the beginning, you’re dying to have someone–anyone–come to your office, even if that person is trying to sell you something.  You’re just glad they came to your humble abode.

At first.

What Dr. Credeur Did Wrong

There is a Part 2 to the story.

I would be remiss if I didn’t present it.

To bring you up to speed, I pretty much tore apart the news story from right around two weeks ago in which some dissatisfied patients and some ignorant news investigators ganged up on a chiropractic doctor in Denver for practicing Functional Medicine.

How Do You Get New Patients?

I was crunching numbers tonight, something that has been long-overdue, since we’ve been open over a year already.  I tallied the number of completed visits (i.e. no no-shows or cancellations), and new patients (again, counting only those who have completed at least one appointment).  I found the following FunFacts…

Patient Says She Was “Duped” by Chiropractic Doctor’s Ads

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/27697281/detail.html

According to the above story, a woman has gone to the media (I couldn’t tell whether she is suing the DC or not) to complain that she was scammed by the DC.  I’ve summarized the facts of the story: