The Death of Value

The adage “the riches are in the niches” no longer seems to hold true.  (There are few approaches that haven’t become commodities anyway anymore.)  And people have short attention spans.  If you don’t provide a commodity, they’ll just be confused.  They may not find you because they don’t know what they’re looking for, or they don’t know what they should be looking for, or they don’t know that you provide something they are looking for or could use.

“But Functional Medicine Is So Expensive!”…or is it?

We hear this all the time.  In fact, it’s probably one of the most common objections/comments we hear (second to “you saved my life”, of course)  (True story, actually.)

If you’re a non-insurance doctor yourself, you’re probably tired of hearing it.  If you’re a patient who has sought Functional Medicine care, you’ve probably said it.

I wouldn’t blame either one of you.

And You Give Yourself Away…and You Give…and You Give

Yes, that’s in honor of the hit song “With or Without You” by U2.

So sue me (grin).

I’m not a martyr.  I’m not someone to burn themselves out and say, “poor me, look at what all I do for everyone else!”  And yet that’s exactly what I ended up doing.  I didn’t intend to, not by a long shot.  But I did anyway.  Live and learn…

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!).

First-Year Learning Curve – Part 1

When I first started this blog I promised that it would speak to multiple audiences (including current and prospective chiropractic students, new and seasoned practicing docs, other healthcare practitioners, and the general public), and discuss multiple topics.  While I’ve covered some quite well (and much, much more to come, since this is my safe little anonymous sounding board and semi-soap box), I’ve neglected to pay attention to the other part (not quite half) of this blog’s intended purpose: to document our successes and lessons learned and our progress as we make it.  So here goes.