Time
is arguable the most precious commodity you will ever manage in your
life. Using it unwisely is like a leak in your canteen as you walk
across a desert. Today you have more distractions and ploys out there
that are vying for your time. Efficient and judicious use of your time
is solely up to you and how you choose to spend it. If time were a bank
account, imagine having your day begin with 1 million dollars in the
account, at the end of the day those dollars will be gone weather you
spend them or not. What will you have to show for your use of those million dollars?
In
a chiropractic practice, most docs frivolously utilize time. I will
review the significant 7 ways most offices are wasting time.
1. Multi-tasking-
I lead off with this one only because it is the doctor and the staff
that are trying to do many things all at the same time. This has been
proven over and over again to be the most ineffective and costly way to
run any business. Multitasking is a myth that assumes that if you are
busy you are getting a lot accomplished. The opposite is actually true.
The more you are multi-tasking the more likely you are to make mistakes,
have incomplete work and also end up not being present with your
customers/practice members.
2. Curing
Closets- I know you may have some great reasons in your limited
thinking why you are still adjusting patients in a closed room with the
door shut, but it is again a time vampire sucking the life right out of
your practice. The open concept for adjusting can offer every benefit
that a closed room offers, baring gowning your patients. If you are
having patients put a gown on for every adjustment then you should
consider moving your practice out of a chiropractic college. There are
so many upsides to open concept adjusting from not only efficiency of
time, but also quality of service, fun, patient education, and it
eliminates the possibility of sexual harassment claims.
3. Using
therapies, treatments, and multiple techniques- Trying to be everything
for everyone is huge debate and a touchy subject in our profession. If
you feel you have to offer multiple services have other staff or
professionals do them for you. You are a chiropractor and your job is to
identify and adjust subluxations. No one else is licensed to do so.
Your dentist does not do the cleanings or the complicated surgeries.
They concentrated on their specialty. They also are not massaging your
stiff neck or looking at your sprained ankle. Yet we feel like we should
be looking into every ailment and trying to treat it with some type of
natural cure or even heaven forbid some jokers want to write
prescriptions. The most efficient and effective, highest volume, most
fun, and most profitable practices (net, not gross) use one technique.
4. Not
talking TIC- Talking about insignificant topics like the weather, last
night’s game, vacations, news, gossip, politics, cross-fit, golf, or
whatever else comes up, not only wastes your time, it erodes the
significance of the care you provide. Thus it leads to drop outs and the
need to process more new ones to keep the ship afloat.
5. Individual
reports- This area is another touchy and even scary subject for many,
couched in many limiting beliefs, it is the notion that the doctor must
do one on one reports. Again the highest volume practices do group
reports. Why? Because they are the most effective, efficient and best
way to educate a new practice member. Many docs try them and struggle
because they don’t know how to do them properly. Can you be successful
without them? Absolutely, but ask yourself how many people can you
adjust in the time that it takes to do one individual report? One of the
other major benefits that we see with our clients doing them regularly
is they end up seeing more children and families due to the quality of
education. If you do 8-10 individual reports in a week, will you always
be on your game for each of those reports? You may think you are, but as
a practice gets busier the doctor gets rushed, and the results show a
practice that is stuck no matter how many new ones you process.
6. Hours
of operation- Being open more hours and more days does not mean you are
doing a greater service or you value your service more than others. If
that were the case then we should have every office open 24/7. The
majority of the docs we survey are working loads of hours, open 5-6 days
a week, seeing the national average of 80-90 adjustments per week. What
if you could adjust those same people in a morning shift, have a great
lunch with your spouse, take a nap, do some reading, exercise, meditate
and come back for the afternoon and adjust that same number again? For
some it seems inconceivable because they are held in bondage by what
someone once said to them.
7. Not
cluster booking- Packing your adjustment hour times before offering
more times is how your time is maximized. It forces you to be at your
best and cut out all the extracurricular things that don’t produce
excellent patient outcomes. When it comes to appointments there are 3
types of people, those that show up early, those that show up on time
and those that are always running late. Cluster booking smooths these
inconsistencies out and keeps you from waiting for people to show up
when you could be doing something more important than checking your
Facebook feed.
Be
honest with yourself, are any of the significant 7 preventing you from
having the practice and life you always wanted? If not, keep doing what
you are doing, kudos to you! If you want to learn more about how to fix
these delemmas, join us at our next Chiropassion event, or contact us at
www.chiropassionconsulting.com
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