THIS IS DR. MARK RADERMACHER, YOUR CHIROPRACTIC PRACTICE MANAGEMENT EXPERT, AND WELCOME TO YOUR TPMI FUNCTIONAL PHILOSOPHY TOPIC.
The topic this week is, Your staff team might be your communications eraser. In other words, you might, envision that you are teaching your patients information, whatever that information is: about chiropractic, about health, about their pain, their problem, their life impact, their care, whatever the subject matter, you’re teaching your patients information.
JUST IMAGINE
As your chiropractic practice management expert, it’s recommended you envision the following: you finish adjusting and communicating with a patient and you watch the patient walk to your front desk, the next thing you hear is the two of them discussing the best brand of suntan lotion. You become deeply upset as you listen to your front desk person effectively erase everything you just taught your patient.
LIKE FINGERNAILS SCREECHING ON A CHALKBOARD
In a split second, your staff team member becomes this big eraser, and erases everything that you just communicated to your patient…just wipes it off the board. You might think, well, why would they do that? And here’s where it gets interesting, as your chiropractic practice management expert, I can tell you, it’s not that they’re doing this intentionally. They’re not waiting for a patient to come to them so that they can excitedly erase everything that you just taught them. That’s not the way it goes. The reality is this is a two-step process, the patient leaves the doctor after having learned something, walks to the next station of their visit with a staff team member of yours, and the staff team member simply launches into some elevator talk. They talk about the weather, they talk about sports, they talk about gardening or cooking or grilling, whatever it is, it is definitely different than what you had just talked with the patient about.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER
Every chiropractic practice management expert should be able to tell you, this has everything to do with people remembering the last thing they heard. To compound the problem, this often turns into an ongoing topic discussion between a patient and one specific staff team member. For example, they’re on the topic of preparing for ski season, and they’re discussing equipment, and different hills and snow conditions and predictions and so on and so on and so on. And it’s an interesting, exciting discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with chiropractic. Soon, the patient is excited to leave you, the doctor, thinking: I’m looking forward to this sort of continued discussion with X, Y, Z staff team member, because you know, that’s fun to talk about…but, tragically, everything that you, the doctor, had been teaching the patient-gets erased.
A SIMPLE TWO STEP PROCESS
So, remember, it was commented this might be a two-step process because the second step here that you could create instead, and as your chiropractic practice management expert, I encourage you to consider is teaching your staff team members what it is you teach your patients. And more specifically, how your staff team could then echo that message to the patient.
STUDY AND CUSTOMIZE
If your staff team has not yet watched and studied the fifth and currently final video in the staff team training on the TPMI website, that would be a great starting point. That’s not the end all, because every doctor is going to teach differently. Not only to the patients, but to staff team members as well.
ECHO THE MESSAGE
If you can envision in this second step, this concept of what if your staff team learned what you were teaching patients and more specifically learned how to echo those messages to the patient. There wouldn’t be any erasing going on. Just imagine; the patient is maybe spending 15, 20, 25 minutes per visit from front door to front door, but just imagine doctor, that everything the patient heard was on the same page. It was about health or it was about chiropractic or it was about their pain, their problem. It was about their life. It was about progress or expected progress, in care. And the patient walked out the door, thinking: absolutely everybody in your clinic is communicating on the same page, and with the same message, at the same time. This is not a chiropractic practice management expert dream; this can be your reality!
ALL ON THE SAME PAGE
They’re literally, as mentioned, on the same page. That would never erase anything, that you were teaching, doctor, that would enhance, that would help the patient understand that there is a theme, that there is a genre in this clinic that is taught and talked about. And that, doctor, would really be the ultimate support in your system of communications. Remember, as your chiropractic practice management expert, you must realize you can always improve your quality of communications. There’s a difference between a six out of ten moving up to an eight out of ten communicator. The same can be said about your staff team.
THE SAME STORYLINE
They can always get better; this fact is always being taught to doctors as your chiropractic practice management expert. It’s an ongoing quest. It’s never ending, literally. Communications is the final frontier in a successful and sustainable practice. But if it has the support of everybody talking essentially the same storyline, that, doctor, is your takeaway from today’s blog…and you can definitely do something about this immediately.
REPLACE A BAD HABIT WITH A GOOD HABIT
Remember, it’s not trying to teach your staff team how to stop erasing, instead, it’s about teaching your staff team how to echo the message you are giving patients. And if you never do this, rest assured, your staff team will never ever come up with this solution, on their own. As your chiropractic practice management expert, if you really want to eliminate the erasing of your communications with patients, teach your staff team how to echo the communications you have with your patients. This will make a huge difference in practice, forever. Have a good day.
