By: Jeff Cohen
Inspired by many medical integration consultants and coaching organizations, chiropractors have vigorously pursued medically integrating their practices in the past handful of years. Led by both the desire to provide effective healthcare solutions and to capture more of the healthcare dollar that their patients are already spending (elsewhere), chiropractors are smart to consider it…slowly!
Too often, there are stories of chiropractors who felt both excited and pushed to sign on the dotted line at integration seminars, only to find later on that (1) the advice they got upset their lawyers, (2) they didn’t understand the complexities and risks that accompanied their practice expansion, and (3) it didn’t work! What are some of the greatest areas of disappointment for those where the integration didn’t go smoothly?
A. Using integration to fix an underlying business problem. For instance, if you’re medically integrating your chiropractic practice because your chiropractic patient volume has fallen off, first try to understand why your core business is down. For instance, do you actively pursue marketing? Is it effective? What about someone inside your organization who is responsible for sales? Do you have someone comfortable offering what you provide and talking money? Since it’s typical for medical integration patients to come from your core chiropractic business, a down chiropractic business will not deliver the patients needed to support a robust medical integration line of services and products; and
