In choosing a practice-management consultant, do your research. Then, be ready to follow the consultant’s advice

It’s always a delicate art to choose a practice consultant. First and foremost, the DC must be ready to accept the advice, and more importantly, be ready to follow it. Although this may sound like a given, many of you reading this have fallen into the trap of not heeding expensive and time-consuming advice–and worse, not following through.

Frustration is commonplace when advice is thrown aside. The DC feels he or she is going nowhere, resulting in resentment. Therefore, it is best to consider your desire to seek help and reduce any disagreements prior to signing on. These disagreements are often philosophical, financial, or technical in nature. The consultant may recommend making new purchases; improving patient management; making treatment changes; creating a marketing strategy that results in an advertising budget or stretches the DC’s comfort zones; hiring or firing staff; or even changing location. If you are unwilling to spend the resources or follow the advice as recommended, it generally results in predictable poor results.

Although time consuming, research is extremely productive prior to hiring a consultant and spending precious time and money. Chiropractic consultants want your business and also want successful clients, since their reputation is riding on their clients’ success. To begin your research, check their Web sites and ask fellow colleagues if they have experience with the consultant that interests you. On my Web site, I have listed Web sites of various consultants. One of these companies has four-day seminars that feature consultants, many that have their own private clients. This smorgasbord of programs is a perfect place to sample them and gauge how others respond to their teaching. It offers the DC a visual and auditory way to decide, as well as some private time to question the consultants and possibly some of their clients.

So your homework is crucial prior to being assured the result will be a perfect match.

Why Consider a Consultant?
The primary question DCs should ask is whether they actually need a practice-management consultant. Find the answer by asking two questions: Are you satisfied with your present professional achievements? Also, do you feel confident with your business-management skills? Chiropractic is an honorable healing profession, but it is ultimately a business. Without the tools to manage staff, patients, and finances, and market your healing hands and intellectual knowledge, your practice will wither on the vine from lack of use. Your community, patients, and bottom line will suffer. This is not meant to disparage our purpose of adjusting, but whether your fees are substantial or you work from the goodness of your heart, you still need the communicative and technical skills to grow and maintain a practice.

New graduates are proud of their diplomas, and expect that once their shingles are up, their offices will be crawling with new patients. Considering their years of training, honing technical skills, and having patients survive their student clinics, they deserve to be successful. Why not expect the best after they leave the cocoon of college? Although school helped us understand the art, science, and philosophy of chiropractic, it poorly taught us the business. The nuances of patient and practice management are as important as a DC’s technical prowess. Therefore, many DCs after years of practice trial and error decide to resort to postgraduate educational programs to further enhance their ability to communicate and provide the proper services. Practice and patient management programs are everywhere, all with weekend seminars, many offering personal one-on-one coaching.

When seeking a consultant, DCs are looking for guidance from a coach. They are reaching for advice and structure, and therefore, will relinquish some control to accomplish their goals. Packaged programs where clients are merely a statistic is best left for DCs who need fine-tuning and are easily able to stretch their comfort zones. Programs with individual attention and one-on-one consultations is best for DCs willing to adjust their practice and follow advice.

Either way, the DC is the controlling and only factor creating wins and losses. The successful consultants are able to sense client needs and make things happen.

Finding the Correct Fit
Some consultants are esoterically-based, raising an enthusiastic groundswell of purpose and excitement for the adjustment and patient interaction. Some are script-oriented, providing the office with strict guidelines and structure. Some are marketing-driven, providing the tools to reach more people and keep them. Some have teams of consultants providing the fundamentals of running a practice from soup to nuts. The successful consultants incorporate all.

A consultant is similar to a coach found within any sports team. A consultant’s team should be made up of experienced staff and dedicated to your goals.

Too often, little personal time is given to clients, since many doctors attend weekend seminars. Guest speakers and vendors are often on hand to discuss the latest trends within our business and offer additional information and opinions. This is fine for most of us, but often a DC seeking help needs the individual coaching that often is lacking.

The most common mantra of new clients is increasing the number of new patients. The common mantra of consultants is helping their clients maintain their practices’ numbers, and through increased practice and patient management, increase all aspects of practice statistics. To accomplish this task, the consultants are beholden to their clients. Presentation is most important, since some DCs are susceptible to new advice and hungry to make changes, while some are resistant to change, forcing the consultants to constantly prove themselves. Therefore, it is prudent for the consultant to read their clients correctly, since proper handholding and management will accomplish all goals. Likewise, it is most important for the client to choose correctly so handholding is at a minimum and advice is accepted with respect and trust.

This is especially true if your choice is technique-based. Some of our guru consultants have merged specific techniques within practice management. If your choice of technique requires extended visits, multiple therapies, patient homework, increased patient commitment, and education, then your choice may be narrowed to those that provide this service. The experienced consultants offer generic management tools that can be applied to all.

Hiring a Consultant
The best outcome of hiring a coach is a better practice with increased services, patient compliance, staff commitment, and successful marketing and public relations programs, all generating increased profits with less stress. A practice manager provides the focus that is missing by refining the practice mission and purpose. Stress is reduced as the practice becomes structured and roles are defined. Service is increased as patient and practice management merge from a like goal. Income increases as new knowledge is implemented within insurance coding, proper patient diagnostic and treatment services, and patient education. Hiring a practice coach allows the DC to benefit from the collective advice of many with time-tested patient procedures that work. If the DC and consultant have a like mind and the DC follows the advice to the letter, success is usually ensured.

Expectations
I often teach at seminars for one particular practice-management consultant. The consultant is similar to many of our sage consultants in that he has more than 20 years of consulting experience. He has heard every conceivable problem and reason why things did or did not work. As with many of his peers, he has had the opportunity of assisting thousands of DCs, and therefore, he has heard every conceivable rationale for either pure success or failure. His weekend seminars offer speakers, a smorgasbord of patient and practice management tools, and internal and external marketing and public relations tools that follow a seminar theme. There is also excellent staff training within each seminar, helping to create the ultimate office followthrough. In addition to a solid no-nonsense weekend of information, his clients receive personal coaching and weekly phone consultations, where ideas, office procedures, and statistics are reviewed and then tweaked or overhauled.

New DCs, even prior to opening and finding their location, receive specific instructions on determining the correct location, and maneuvering through lease and equipment contracts, advertising ideas, and budgets, community surveying, and patient and practice management tools. Nothing is left out in ensuring a new or established DC’s success. You should expect no less from a coach.

Everyone needs a coach. The mechanics of running a successful practice in today’s health care environment gets trickier each day. An active DC has limited time to spend re-creating the wheel and often needs someone to keep abreast of the nuances of practice management and growth. If you feel the need to focus more, be up on the latest trends in patient management, and offer extended services with increased patient and staff commitment, then finding a consultant or timely weekend seminars would be appropriate. The cost is far outweighed by your increased income, a practice that is focused, reduced stress, and increased patient service. If you have been swimming upstream and have found it difficult to get to the next level of practice potential, then it may be time to look for a coach. If you had a coach in the past and it didn’t work out, do your homework and search again. CP

Joel E. Margolies, DC, has an active practice in Atlanta. He has written four practice-management books titled: Smart Start, Chiropractic Marketing and Public Relations, Workshop Workbook, and the Personal Injury Workbook. He also sends a free weekly e-mail to more than 10,000 chiropractors in 31 countries and maintains an active chiropractic resource Web site. www.chirosmart.net.