Great Staff, Mediocre Chiropractor, Great Practice
March 24th, 2010 // 8:00 am @ Dr. Todd Osborne // No Comments
I have been teaching some classes recently on “Insurance Proofing Your Practice”. The system I teach is designed to work with or without insurance reimbursement. In fact, many run completely cash practices and do very, very well. In preparing for the classes I polled several of our Chiropractic Management family that run high volume cash or mostly cash practices to get their opinions on what makes them able to do this, while others feel there is no way they could run a successful cash practice. The resounding reply…..staff, staff, staff. Of course they had some comments on the chiropractor’s belief system and procedures, but all them over and over commented on how important the staff is for their offices to operate mainly cash in such an insurance infested market.
Some of the responses I received are: “the staff must ‘buy in’ to be successful in cash practicing”, “staff training and concepts are essential if you are going to run a thriving cash practice”, and “my staff has to be better at their procedures than I am at mine”. As you can see, the chiropractors that are successful at running cash practices have seen the light that the staff is as, if not more, important than the doctor! It comes back to the principle we have always talked about in chiropractic consulting. Give me a great doctor and a mediocre staff and at best I will produce a mediocre practice. Give me a great staff and a mediocre doctor and I will produce a great practice. Whether cash or insurance or in between, a great staff is so vitally important to your chiropractic success.
Many chiropractors beat there heads against the wall trying to grow their practice, when in many cases, it is the staff right under their nose that either needs to be replaced, retrained (possibly trained for the first time!), and developed.
I could go on, and I think I will with a Part II on staff development. Take a look at your staff. Have you trained them to be a great staff, given them the procedures and tools they need to be great? Are you developing your staff or just assuming that they will magically become great CA’s? More next time on developing staff.
Category : Blog &Chiropractic Staff &Featured Works &Practice Building
