Why You Are Not Out Marketing Your Spinal Injury Practice
Jeffrey Cronk, DC JD
CEO Spinal Kinetics Founder of SmartInjuryDoctors Program
Why aren't you out marketing your injury practice? I train doctors all over the country. It is called the SmartInjuryDoctors program and one of the things that I am routinely asking doctors when I'm working with them one-on-one is why aren't you out marketing? They are trying to figure out how to get the PowerPoint. We have PowerPoints that work. They work like a charm. They're trying to figure out how to redo the PowerPoint or how to fix it up better. Or they have ideas that they have to speak better or maybe they should buy more clothes or better clothes. They got all these reasons and all these reasons are why they're not out engaged in the market.
Oh, they don't have a lot of time, yada, yada, yada. I've heard them all. Now, I'm going to tell you right now as somebody that has helped coach a lot of practices, the number one reason I found that you are not out marketing your injury practice is because you're not completely sold on it. I'm going to say that again. The reason why you will not be out marketing your injury practice, talking to attorneys, talking to medical doctors, talking to people at church, talking to patients, talking everywhere about the benefits of your injury practice is because you're not 100% sold on your injured practice. There's something about your injury practice that you're not sold on. Maybe it's the treatment. Maybe you're not understanding the treatment. Maybe it's diagnosis. You're not understanding how easy it is to be able to diagnose the severity and location of each patient's injuries and not miss injuries, but maybe you don't feel that way.
Maybe you feel like, ‘ah, I don't know’. You have this hesitation inside. Maybe I'm missing a lot of things. Maybe I don't know how my adjustments help excessive motions, ligament injuries. Maybe I don't know how that works. Maybe I don't know how my other treatment really affects this. I don't know if my guideline procedures are good or if I'm following guidelines. I don't know if my billing procedures are accurate or good. I don't know if my coding is. Whatever it is, there's something, there's always something when I'm working with a doctor.
If you're not out marketing your injury practice and you're not out actually saying "Hey, oh my gosh, nice to meet you. Oh, you're an attorney? Personal injury attorney? Good. Nice to meet you. My name is Dr. Cronk. I run a chiropractic practice over here. We specialize on spinal ligament injuries. One of the best in the area of actually doing, treating these injuries and one of the things that we're absolutely stellar at is the documentation so your life as an attorney, a lot easier."
"The other thing I want to tell you is I've got a practice over here that we developed and if you, your son, your daughter, or somebody that you love actually had an injury and they had a ligament injury, which is the number one cause of pain and disability, but let's say that your son or daughter had a ligament injury and now it's causing migraine headaches. They had a cranial cervical junction ligament injury now causing migraine headaches. They were in a car accident and now your son or daughter, let's say they're a 12 or they're 14. And now they're actually having migraine headaches and they're throwing up as a result of it. They feel like a social outcast at school. Your wife is very concerned about it. Everyone is. You yourself are extremely concerned about it."
"You as an attorney are not going to be thinking about, well, gosh, I can't wait. Geez, let's see how much we can get for this case. That's not what you're thinking about at all. What you're thinking about is, oh my God, as a parent, how do I figure out where do I go? What doctor do I find? Who do I get to help my kid get over this condition? That's what you're going to be interested in. That's what I've created over here. Now I've created it over here for you, your family or anyone in our community. We're super good at it and or super good at understanding the documentation requirements that make your life easy. I'd love to do business with you. I know that you represent in your patients and I know that those patients oftentimes are working with doctors where they don't have an accurate diagnosis, they aren't making good progress, and generally that's because it's not fully understood what they have."
How hard is that doctors? You're with a medical doctor? Good. I know you as a medical doctor. Now I'm with the lead care lead doctor at a urgent care center. I know that you guys get a lot of injuries. They get back injuries, neck injuries, auto injuries, work related injuries, domestic violent injury where the patient has injured their spine. The biggest problem with that patient is you get to get them to a doctor that understands the ligament injury.
Ligament injuries are two-fold. You could have a disc herniation, which is part of what you see with imaging with a ligament injury, but the most problematic injury is the one that causes excessive motion that you see in stress radiology with accurate measurements. And that condition causes a spinal instability and that patient must have that diagnosed as quickly as possible and appropriate treatment put on it as quickly as possible or you seriously increase the risk of the patient going chronic. We developed this clinic over here.
Doctors, it becomes very easy, but if you're not out marketing and you're sitting in your clinics going, "Okay, what do I got to do? What do I have to do?” I'm telling you that what is behind the “what do I got to do?” Not all of it, but a lot of it can be the fact that there's something that you're doing or something that you feel that you should be doing that you're not doing or results that you should be getting, but you're not getting, that is what is withholding you from going out and telling the world just how good of a practice that you've actually developed and what the purpose of that practice is.
These things are easy to fix. They're usually easy to fix with education. That's why I developed this SmartInjuryDoctors program. It was to help doctors to understand very simply the most common thing that they hit with injury patients.
1. How to accurately diagnose.
2. How to manage that patient for much better results.
3. How to document in such a way that the patient has access to any benefits they may be entitled to and trust the attorneys like that. They like great documentation that makes their job of helping the patient access any benefits they're entitled to in an easier fashion.
It becomes very easy when you have these things to market. If you don't have those things you need to take a look at how you can enhance yourself so that you can get those things. You are the biggest thing to invest in. You're the most valuable thing to invest in in your own practice. Your own education, whether it's education in the form of joining a SmartInjuryDoctors program, or educating yourself with personal injury practice consultants, it doesn't matter because what you should be continuously doing. You should be continuously educating yourself. Pick a practice manager a year, practice consultant a year to get consulted with. Continuously educate yourself, it pays off big dividends in your practice. It really does.
You definitely want to have an understanding and feel very, very comfortable with exactly what you're doing and the results that you can get. And when you are, in my experience, you have no problem marketing, you have no problem at all. Plus people will market for you. Patients will market for you, other attorneys will market for you, medical doctors will market for you. Anybody that you're interacting with will market for you when you get to that state. And that's a beautiful thing when it gets to that point. Doctors, if you feel like you have a deficit in education, I tell you, check out the SmartInjuryDoctors program. For those of you that are in the program, you know exactly what I'm talking about and you are out there marketing and I so appreciate you.
For more information on Spinal Ligament Injuries please check us out at www.smartinjurydoctor.com or check out our SmartInjuryDoctors? Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher.
For information on spinal ligament testing by board certified medical radiologists go to www.thespinalkinetics.com