How to Feed the Program

                                               #1 Program and Office Infrastructure 

                                                           #27 How to Feed the Program 

                                                         

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The mere act of forwarding an email or posting an exchange to a website is grounds for legal action according to University of Arkansas law professor Ned Snow. Snow contends that one of the most common acts of the digital age is a violation of privacy and warns that our courts are running headlong into this issue.

Your success with the MD Program is based on a few fundamentals and if you can understand them, the rest is simply additional effort. 90% of the program is allowing me to help you reach out to the MD community and stay in front of them. Once you “get” that, there are only a few different scenarios out there to experience. If I can guide you through that, the rest is cake. The biggest stumbling block for most offices is not having MDs to communicate with; the program dies on the vine. 

To be successful with this program and increase your patient referrals, you need to FOCUS on reaching out the MD community. This has to be done with blinders on and must be devoid of any personal or emotional attachment. In other words, you are throwing it out there and you don’t care who bites. This process is so important and is the most commonly overlooked, it is the difference between 10 referrals per week and 0. The “reaching out” process is designed to find those doctors that want to work with you and your office. You then implement the other portions of the program for the MDs that want to work with you and ignore the rest. The hardest part for many DCs is to get this part going, mostly out of fear of the unknown.   There is fear that they know more than you, there is fear that you will say something wrong, there is fear that they don’t “get” chiropractic. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT. When there is a MD that is a true “doctor” they will work with you, trust me I know!  

Feeding the program starts in two places, first we reach out to the MDs that we may be working with already but not necessarily enjoying the number of referrals that we would like (remember that these MDs may not have the practice that you think they do, we always imaging that others are busier than we are). The second place is your outreach using neuromusculoskelal research and positioning yourself as a leader in spinal care. The key is to position yourself without YOU SAYING IT…True leaders never have to say, “Hi, I am a leader”. This takes consistent effort, but it is easy to do. The research is the key, but I must point out that the research alone is not going to build the relationship it is used as a bridge. You still need to walk across that bridge to meet the MD on the other side. 

If you haven’t started, you need to create 5-10 binders and identify as many Primary Care and Specialty Medical Offices to start to build a relationship with. The place to start is with a phone call as outlined in past Consultations and then drop off the binders.   The quickest way to build the relationships with the MD office is for YOU to engage them, not your staff. Staff can be helpful and there are doctors in the program that are doing this with staff, but it is MUCH quicker when it is you. The MDs are going to ignore staff in many cases and it can slow the process down.   When the MD finally refers, they will be referring to YOU not your STAFF. Besides, you cannot have a staff member doing something that you yourself have not done. If you don’t know, how can you teach them? No one is too busy to stop at a MD office or two per week, if you think you are you are being as efficient as you could be. If you are seeing fewer than 120 patients per day, you have time… 

REMEMBER – LEADERS ARE DOING WHAT OTHERS ARE AFRAID OR UNWILLING TO DO!