Dr. R. A. Foxworth, FICC, MCS-P
Whether you celebrated Valentine’s Day or not, it’s almost impossible to avoid the hearts, candy, balloons, and flowers in the supermarket aisles. And they’ll be there a few more weeks at HUGE discounts! (It’s a shame they don’t keep!) Love—or, at the very least, the commercial expression of love—has been in the air. And that had me thinking about what I love. I am blessed. My list of loved ones and cherished endeavors is long. Most of all, I’m grateful that after 30 years in practice, I still love my profession and what I do.
ChiroHealthUSA members like you have already taken a big step toward engaging in caring, compassionate ways with your practices and your patients. Joining us by offering your financially challenged and under-insured patients an affordable and legal way to get the care they deserve is a loving act unto itself. What else could you do to fall just a little more in love with your practice?
Encourage your staff to connect in a meaningful way with patients.
Your patients’ experiences of your practice start with the first person they talk to on the phone and/or meet at the front desk. Each visit is shaped by the final interaction as they schedule their next appointments, pay for service if necessary, and, perhaps, purchase cash products. In other words, your front desk staff members are ambassadors for you and your practice. Are they fully trained not just in the mechanics of how to run your office systems but in how to talk to patients in a meaningful, intentional, effective, and compassionate way? Sometimes it’s tempting to focus on dates and payments and forget the humanity of the patient standing before us. Encourage your staff to connect, to make direct eye contact, to get to know a little something about each patient, whether it’s their kids, their spouses, their jobs, or their hobbies.
Find that often elusive work-life balance.
Are you still at the office at 7 or 8 pm, buried in a pile of paperwork? Chiropractic has become far more complex than it was when I started out, and I see no signs that the profession will become less regulated or less complicated going forward. ChiroHealthUSA affords you access to the best and brightest minds in the profession, specialists who can help you get your reimbursement, compliance, documentation, and other systems set up and in order so that they run smoothly and efficiently. When you show a little love for the business side of your practice, you get to spend more time with patients, and you get to go home and spend more time with the people who matter to you most: your family.
Take on what you fear most.
Counterintuitive? Perhaps. But when we lie awake at night worrying about billing and collections, or ICD-10 and whether we know what the heck we’re doing, or whether we could pass an audit, we aren’t taking action or solving the problem. We’re simply stewing in it. Fear is a bully. The best way to take it down is to meet it head on. Need training on boosting reimbursement? Want to learn how ICD-10 differs from ICD-9, and be walked through every step you can take to be ready for the October 15 implementation? Would you like assistance self-auditing so you know without question whether your documentation is sound? We can help guide you to trusted resources that will can help with all of that.
Love is in the air this time of year—and it can flow from and to your practice as well. Let us help you fall back in love with what you do. Reach out to us any time at info@chirohealthusa.com.
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Why is the Discount Challenge prize amount $15,024? Because that is the average “per-occurrence” fine for Medicare inducements. That’s not $15,024 per patient, that’s not per provider, that’s PER VISIT. Stinks, doesn’t it? To us, the prize amount is worth the investment if we can help our profession better understand proper discounting.