Internal systems must be efficient, fo- cused and organized. Chaos cannot reign at the front desk. If chaos en- sues, the CHA’s focus is on “getting the patient out the door,” not maximizing their experience and educating them. The two critical internal systems in- clude pre-booking of appointments and payments. When these two things are taken care of, imagine the time this frees up in that four-to-six minutes! Now, the CHA and patient can communicate about other things such as chiropractic, personal ac- counts of healing, testimonies, etc. Create an automatic education sys- tem, that is, educational tips and points that occur on every visit for the patient, or periodically through- out their care. Ensure that it is clear when these should happen and what they might be. For example; set topics of the week for discussion, bulletin boards that stimulate questions from the patient, literature that they can take with them home, etc. Train, train, train! I have written ex- tensively about training. Your staff must understand your message in your practice, what do you want your patients to say about chiropractic in the community. What questions might patients have about your edu- cative information? Try and anticipate these and then role play! Role play, role play, role play! Determine the amount of time a patient spends with your staff member. Video tape their interaction – with the patient’s consent of course – and then replay it for your staff. What are they talk- ing about? What is the focus in those four-to-six minutes? Then practice alternative responses on each other. I believe strongly we should not be “practicing” our skills on our patients, we should “practice” on one another. It makes us stronger and more confi- dent, and the benefit to the patient is astronomical. They receive the best of who we are! Create an experience that is stimulat- ing for your patients to learn within. There are different types of learners in the world. Some are auditory, visual, tactile (touch focused) – or verbal. Try and incorporate a variety of strategies that cover these areas. Does this seem like a lot of work? As www.canadianchiropractor.ca the DC – or leadership personnel – in the practice, you have to understand that the importance of educating your patients is greater than just compliance for treatment. If training your staff to educate your pa- tients is not a priority for your practice, you will wind up meeting patients in the community who have not told one other person about chiropractic because they cannot explain it! This is not beneficial for chiropractic or for any of your patients’ friends or families who might benefit from visiting your office. Generally, satisfaction with chiroprac- tic amongst patients of individual offices is very high. But, if a patient has a good experience in your office but tells no one, is that good enough? Is it possible for us to envision our patients being comfortable with explaining what we do and encour- aging others to try it out? I think it is pos- sible; we are doing this every day in our practices across Canada. I think we can do it better by changing our focus in that crit- ical four-to-six minutes that our patients
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor April 2010: Page 31
