This might very well be a dead horse. And I’m going to beat it one more time, in what I hope is the LAST time. In fact, I wasn’t going to write another post on the chiropractic Maximized Living franchise, but I do feel I might need to clarify and reiterate a few items, in response to some of the themes of feedback I’ve gotten on my previous posts on this subject.
Continue reading FAQs, “For The Record”s, and Final Thoughts of Maximized Living
Day 3 in the Maximized Living world is a group presentation, followed by an individual meeting with the doc. They review the x-rays with the couple, again going so far as to link a change in curves, joints, or angles, with scary words like long-term disease process. So a reversed curve is causing disease? Do they say which disease? If it’s something structural, they may have a point. If they’re insinuating anything else, however, that’s too far a stretch.
Now, there’s no written formula here for exactly how many visits each patient should be prescribed, nor how much it should cost, other than the regular new patient package (consult, exam, and x-rays).
So, final words to the wise:
Day 2 consists of the x-ray findings and first adjustment. Of course, the doc has reviewed the x-rays and mentions that s/he is concerned. The patient, of course, has vertebral subluxation, which is one of the “worst kinds” of problems.
Really?
“Worst kinds”?
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!).
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.
It certainly seems that the millisecond some of us walk across, the stage, out the door, and into the great wide open, we start accumulating some. Indeed, in time, each of these items will warrant–and receive–its own post, but for now, I’ll provide the Cliff’s Notes, which are by no means a complete list.
(I’ll preface all this by acknowledging that there are a few bad apples in every profession, and that the field of chiropractic is not in any way unique in that regard. I also wholeheartedly agree that most DCs get sick people well on a daily basis, without breaking laws or resorting to unflattering schemes. However, over the years, my dismissal of extreme stories as simple urban legends, horror stories, or exaggerated rumors gave way to a realization that we have a few more bad apples than we care to admit to. And it’s time we did some admitting, followed immediately by some cleaning house.)
We have closet perverts in our midst.
Charting Doctor Territory 