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Technology Will Solve Chronic Pain

Technology Will Solve Chronic Pain

Technology Will Solve Chronic Pain

What I would like to talk about today is how technology will kill the chronic pain problem in the future.  What I mean by that is that technology is going to solve the chronic pain problem in the future, that it will seriously reduce it down.  Now for me as a Smart Injury Doctor and trainer, and for you, it will be very easy to understand because we will solve the biggest problem with chronic pain,  misdiagnosis or incorrect treatment which is the most common causes of chronic pain.

One of the things that I look at the most right now in the musculoskeletal market is that modern medicine is under-trained in that particular category.  Musculoskeletal chronic pain is the most common chronic pain that there is.  There is a big educational gap that needs to be filled.  One of the ways that we are going to solve this problem is through technology and proper data evaluation.  Data evaluation is when you have massive amounts of data that will tell you things that can’t really be discovered any other way.  Good data evaluation is completely unprejudiced.

Artificial Intelligence is the emerging new technology of the future.  Artificial intelligence is a technology that learns as it goes by collecting and evaluating data.   Through data evaluation with artificial intelligence we will be able to determine the condition and which doctor is best for that condition, without prejudice.  There are different specialties and conditions will be sectioned into which specialty treats that condition better.  The technology will be able to differentiate which providers are the best providers and then it will show which providers treat the specific injury or condition.    If a medical doctor is best for chronic neck pain because they can diagnose and exactly pinpoint what is causing the problem, then reduce it, the data will show that.  Now if chiropractors are the best for evaluating that diagnosis, getting down to the root cause of it and getting results they will be looked at.  Maybe acupuncturists or Physical Therapists will be looked at.  Doctors that are good in the market will start to rise to the top, which is where they should be.  Patients should have no problems finding good doctors.  I’ve said for years that patients need to find doctors that are in the top 20% in their profession. 

For instance, let’s say a patient was in an auto accident.  The auto accident may have the same injuries as a sports accident with the only difference being the mechanism of injury.  So now Artificial Intelligence will be able to not only look at the injury, but the mechanism of injury to determine which local provider is the best in that area to provide the best care for the auto injury patient as they have the best auto injury practice results.  So, what does the best even mean??  The best means that you can take the patient’s condition, you can quickly get the patient correctly diagnosed and you can properly get the patient treated in a reasonable amount of time at a reasonable cost. Then the results will be tracked.  What is meant by results?  The results would be if a patient comes through your program, whether 3 months, 6 months or more and they have no chronic pain.  They have no duties that they can’t perform due to their injury.   Sometimes it will look at what procedures are necessary for the given condition and what providers perform that procedure.  All of those things will be tracked and the data will be evaluated through Artificial Intelligence.   This technology will help reduce the chronic pain epidemic in the United States of America.

 Now you can have people controlling the technology, entering their biases in it.  The solution to this problem is using a third party.   Someone who is not a treating provider, someone who is not vested in a particular area and that is only vested in providing the public with the best data so they can make the best choices for themselves.  Employers, governments and insurers will be able to use the data in order to direct people to the best options. 

I think the results in the market speak for themselves.  Neck and back injuries are number one and four in the causes for chronic pain in the United States of America.  The biggest problem in the market is that we do not have doctors that know what neck and back injuries look like or how to accurately diagnose and understand how to identify and determine the severity and location of these types of injuries.  As we increase the awareness, we will see a reduction in chronic pain.   Do you know how we will increase awareness??  With the program I developed called The SmartInjuryDoctors Training program.  The package will help doctors understand what they need to be able to do, understand how to train their staff so they can develop a service team to help deliver better results and then how to market what they are doing that makes them unique in the market.  SmartInjuryDoctors should be some of the busiest doctors in the market today.

Artificial Intelligence will help with this problem.  The biggest thing that individual providers need to do is continuously educate themselves and focus on better results.  The better results, and the more consistently you provide better results, the more valuable you will be in the market.   The higher you are going to get paid, the easier and less stressful it’s going to be to develop your practice. 

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

Want to learn more about Smartinjurydoctor's Program?

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New Richmond, WI 54017

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Call Lee Ann at 1-800-940-6513, ext 700

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© 2019 Biocybernetics Inc.

Explaining CRMA Spinal Ligament Injury Testing to Your Patients

Explaining CRMA Spinal Ligament Injury Testing to Your Patients

Explaining CRMA Spinal Ligament Injury Testing to Your Patients

I want to talk about explaining CRMA results to your patients. CRMA is Computerized Radiographic Mensuration Analysis. It’s a spinal ligament injury test that picks up the imaging biomarker of a ligament injury. An imaging biomarker is something that is detectable on an image that leads to a definitive diagnosis. There are 220 specialized ligaments in the human spine, 23 of which are discs. If we have a disc derangement or disc herniation, that’s an imaging biomarker that is picked up on MRI. We can also have excessive motion, which is the most problematic ligament injury there is. That imaging biomarker is picked up on standard stress radiology. We know that there are normal ranges for the movement of an intervertebral body. We know that there are abnormal movement ranges and we know there are seriously abnormal movement ranges that are consistent with what is left behind with a ligament injury.

You first must explain to the patient why you are doing this testing procedure and what you are looking for in the results. After you have done this, you have positioned yourself as an expert in this area by saying, “Look, this testing is what we do in order to determine the severity and location of a ligament injury. This is the most significant injury that the spine can undergo. So we only use the highest level of professional and competent radiologists that we can find to perform this service.” You are elevating yourself and your status. You’ve already done this with the patient. You’ve already explained why you’re sending out for this procedure. You’ve already explained to the patient that this is unique.

I have also educated doctors to tell their patients in their consultation that the majority of people out there that have chronic pain today have the condition that this test picks up and they’ve just never had it diagnosed. It goes undiagnosed so they are living with chronic pain when they could actually be getting help. Having this conversation with your patients will get you more referrals. It assists you with getting more non-injury referrals because remember, the thing that causes acute pain in an injury state is the same thing that causes chronic pain. It is the same condition.

Now you are at the visit where you need to explain their results. For example, Mark’s test came back and indicates a C4 on C5 nerve problem, or you have C4 on C5 alteration of motion segment integrity at that state for translation findings.

You are explaining, “Mark your test results came back. I’ve got them. It shows that you have severe ligament damage in the middle part of your neck.” I would touch the patient, I would point to it. You don’t have to give them the report, that’s not important. Those are not the important things. “Mark, here’s what is important. It came back, there was significant ligament damage. Now what that does is it doesn’t change our treatment goals. The treatment goals that I said to you in the report of findings are still the treatment goals today. Those goals are to have you pain-free at the end of our care and have you have no chronic pain, no chronic situation at all with this condition. To have it not interfering with any activity of your daily living and do not have it interfere with your ability to earn a living at all. I want you where you feel like you never had the injury in the first place. That’s the goal. Now, what this test tells me though, is that you’re at much higher risk for a thing called long-term residual complaints. Those are conditions that never fully go away. That’s a chronic condition. You’re at high risk for that. Now, here’s the thing that I need to tell you. You are the patient that cannot miss care. You can’t miss visits. You can’t miss anything that we’re telling you to do in treatment. You have to be a stellar patient because I’m not just working on your spine to reduce down your acute pain and the situation today, as a provider, I’m looking at your spine and your spinal health 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now. Seriously, I’m looking at your future when we are doing this treatment program now.”

“It’s my job, as your guide, to get you through treatment and you’ll understand it as we go. So here’s what I’m telling you, as a result of this condition, you’ve got to be really good with treatment. You also have to be really good with communicating to me. If I have you do an in-office rehab procedure, I will have you do an at home exercise program, and any of this seems to bother you at all, I need you to tell me right away. Tell me right away. Okay? This is information that I need to know. Now, I gave you injury recommendations about water, about sleep, about an anti-inflammatory diet.” (Doctors, we have a thing called SmartInjuryRecommendations that are just basic fundamentals that you’re going to give the patient to get healthier in the first place and to reduce their own inflammation.)

“I’ve given you those recommendations. Those are good things to do, right? I need you to know that with this level of ligament damage, it causes instability in the spine. Anything that’s unstable is prone to erratic or unpredictable behavior. Your spine may be good for a while and then you can have a flare-up. Now, that’s going to be important for you to know because we’re going to be talking with you about supportive care toward the end of your care.”

 

Doctors, I am initiating supportive care conversations in week one because it’s the truth. “What that means is that I’m going to be recommending probably, no matter how well you do in care, that we do two to four visits a year for the next two years after you’re done with care just to support the care that we did and then I’ll want you to take a look at doing…” My patients that see me twice a year or four times a year, and they do it for 30 years, are going to be much healthier than my patients that wait 10 years, don’t see me, and now they come in with some sort of situation and now they want me to fix it.

So it’s much easier to take care of a spine a little bit over time than it is to take care of a spine that has been badly neglected for years or decades. But this is a  talk we’re going to have toward the end of care. I just want you to know that we are going to be having that conversation. Doctors, you’re starting to talk about this now just by being in your report to the patient and you’re allowing the patient to ask you now, any questions that you want to ask them. You’re telling that patient, “Look, this is the other thing with this condition is, in treatment, a lot of times everything’s going to go really well, so you’ll spend a month or two and all of a sudden you realize, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m a hundred percent better and I should be done with treatment.”

And then suddenly you watch a football game on a Monday night; You sleep wrong on your neck; It feels like you’re right back at day one. You are not back on day one. Now doctors, if you don’t tell them that they can hit this, here’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to think that your care is not working. So if you tell them that it could happen and it happens, your status goes up. So now you’re basically telling the patient if that happens, you just come in for a visit or two and I’ll have you right back to where you were. That’s the nature of this condition. Now, if you tell them that and they hit it, they will be back in your office.

If you don’t tell them that they may have flare-ups, they might be in their office and complaining that their neck hurts.  Their coworker might say that chiropractic care didn’t work for them and that they went to a physical therapist or other doctors. The next thing you know, your patient is now in that other doctor or physical therapist’s office because you didn’t tell him they could have a flare-up. They will think your treatment didn’t work.

At the end of care when you’re talking to them about supportive care.  That you routinely want to have patients see you either twice or four times a year for the next two years after an injury. Just for some routine supportive care. Remember, you’re releasing a patient who is on consistent care with you. You don’t know how it’s going to be when they’re not with consistent care.

If they opted not to take up that recommendation, then I just reminded them that their injury causes an instability. If two months, three months, six months, a year, two years from now, the pain that they feel now starts to it starts to come back, I don’t for a minute, want you to think our care didn’t work. It worked perfectly. And doctors, if you don’t tell patients this and the pain does come back two, four, five, six months later, they think your care didn’t work. You tell them, “No, it’s not because the care didn’t work. It’s because it needs some supportive care. Come right in, right away, do an adjustment or two and let me get you right back to where you were.” Doctors, that’s what you want to talk about.

Now, the other thing that you want to talk about at that point is the fact that they have injury analysis, always. This is obviously not when you’re talking to the patient about their report. This is more into when you’re talking to the patient at the end of care that you always have a baseline of their injuries and that baseline can always be retested and that’s the beauty of a CRMA test. But doctors, what you want to do in that report is, you want to explain the fact that you want to increase their compliance and you also want to explain, “Look, this is the number one situation that most people don’t have diagnosed and when they get injured they need to have this diagnosis.”

So you want to position yourself as that doctor for their friends, their family, their coworkers, the people that they know that have chronic pain, that are in injuries, that are getting bad care because they’re working with doctors that don’t even know how to determine the severity and location of the injuries that they have. This is what makes SmartInjuryDoctors smart. This is what makes SmartInjuryDoctors competent. So it’s important to go over those things when you’re going over that CRMA report.

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

Want to learn more about Smartinjurydoctor's Program?

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New Richmond, WI 54017

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Clearwater Florida 33755

[email protected]
Call Lee Ann at 1-800-940-6513, ext 700

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© 2019 Biocybernetics Inc.

A Chiropractic Subluxation is a Spinal Instability

A Chiropractic Subluxation is a Spinal Instability

A Chiropractic Subluxation is a Spinal Instability

I want to talk about the term subluxation and spinal instability. I am a doctor of chiropractic. I have been a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic for close to 30 years or maybe even slightly more. In my profession there is a term called spinal subluxation. Very important because it’s what happens in injuries to the spine. A spinal subluxation is a probably one of the most misunderstood terms in my profession. It’s a very simple term.

The term subluxation, or a spinal subluxation in chiropractic, has gotten a bad rap. It’s gotten a bad name. A lot of doctors don’t even like to use it anymore. In my experience, they don’t like to use it because they don’t understand what it is, and they don’t understand how to evaluate it, how to find it, how to remove it. They don’t understand any of that. I didn’t either as an early practitioner, so my education did not provide me with an understanding of what it was, how to locate it, and how to remove it. Even though I went to one of the finest chiropractic colleges in the world.

So I’m sure a lot of you are in the same position and if you’re a young provider, it’s even worse because the more as time went on, the more confused the market became about the term. A  spinal subluxation is nothing more than a misalignment of the vertebra or a vertebra that is an abnormal motion that causes nerve interference. And the nerve interference might be motor sensory or pain problems. Now we could say visceral as well, but that’s a little less explored and a little less understood.

We are just going to stay with motor sensory or pain. So if you have an abnormal position or abnormal motion in the spine and it causes a motor sensory or pain problem, you have a spinal subluxation. Now, my colleagues have confused that term with what’s called a medical subluxation. And a medical subluxation is defined as less than a full dislocation and you see it on x-ray. If you see a misalignment on x-ray medically, that can be called a subluxation, but that’s not what the profession of chiropractic called it. Professional chiropractic calls that a misalignment. If you have a misalignment that’s not causing a motor sensory or pain problem, then it’s just a misalignment. But when it bridges over or it clinically starts to express itself in a motor problem, a sensory problem or a pain problem, then you have an act of subluxation.

Now there’s another term medically that means the same thing and it’s very important in the injury market because the condition that I’m about to share with you is the condition that causes the most amount of chronic pain and disability in the world today. And it’s called a spinal instability, medically. A spinal instability exists in a motion unit when they abnormally move or excessively move, and it causes a motor sensory or pain problem. It’s called a spinal instability. Now, a spinal instability in medicine is exactly the same thing that a spinal subluxation is in chiropractic. They’re identical.

Most chiropractors don’t fully understand what the term spinal subluxation means. They don’t understand a spinal subluxation, that if you have an abnormal motion pattern or an abnormal alignment pattern and it causes a motor sensory or pain problem, you have an active subluxation. Now, you also have an active spinal instability and like both terms, it requires x-ray findings plus a motor sensory or pain clinical correlation. The examinations are very, very easy to do. They’re not standardly being done in my profession of chiropractic or in medicine. A spinal instability examination is not standardly being done. It should be, it should be a standard practice in every chiropractic college.

Now, if you remove the motor sensory or the pain problem that’s associated with the misalignment or mis-movement pattern in the vertebral bodies itself, you have removed the spinal subluxation and you have removed the spinal instability. Even though the excessive motion is still there or the misalignment is still there. If you remove the clinical aspect of what you’re seeing on imaging, you have removed the subluxation or you’ve reduced the spinal instability. It’s just that simple. Now it’s very, very simple to show you what I’m talking about. If I take a pinwheel and I run a pinwheel on the upper part of my outside lateral part of my arm, it’s the C5 dermatome. Means the C5 nerve is somehow affected. Now I can go to the C5 nerve, which I know comes out of the C4-C5 motion unit and I can look and say, is that misaligned or is there abnormal motion there? And if I have this sensory problem, I’m going to see a misalignment or abnormal motion at that unit. And that’s what a spinal instability is, and that’s what an active chiropractic subluxation is.

Now I can address this nerve condition by addressing and bringing into better alignment and restoring the neuromuscular control of the motion unit through spinal adjusting. And I can reduce this sensory problem. Remember I said motor sensory or pain problem, if I reduce it, I’ve reduced the spinal subluxation. I’ve reduced the spinal instability, but routinely understanding every level where it comes out is the job of my profession, the profession of chiropractic, and it should be routinely being done and routinely reported, especially in injury work. Because in injury work, the ligaments and damage to the ligaments are the most debilitating condition that you can have. So being able to perform simple evaluations should be very, very easy for most Doctor of Chiropractic.

And I’m sure there may be in controversy in what I’m saying, because understanding this is the road to standardizing the workups. One of the biggest problems in my profession is that there are no standard workups and there must be standard workups. Imagine if you had the profession of dentistry and all dentists were looking for cavities, but they were all doing it in a different way. There was all kinds of different techniques to try to locate those cavities. It would lead to a pretty confusing profession. In the injury market, especially, if you’re a doctor of chiropractic right now, we need to standardize our examination procedures. And understanding these key two terms is one step toward aligning and standardizing our procedures.

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

Want to learn more about Smartinjurydoctor's Program?

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New Richmond, WI 54017

1-800-940-6513, ext 700

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701 Richards Ave
Clearwater Florida 33755

[email protected]
Call Lee Ann at 1-800-940-6513, ext 700

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© 2019 Biocybernetics Inc.

Who Are You Really Treating With A Spinal Injury Patient?

Who Are You Really Treating With A Spinal Injury Patient?

Who are you really treating when you’re treating a patient?

I know that sounds a little bit funny, but what I want to talk about is giving you an idea of thoughts that you should have with each new patient.

First of all, each person is uniquely different.  When your receptionist answers the phone, that person that they’re talking to could be a source of 100 referrals for you for the next year. They could be a source of 200 injury referrals in their lifetime. They can be a source of so many different things. You have no idea who you’re talking to and unless your clinic, or whoever is answering the phone, treats that person that way, you’re making an error.

You never know who somebody is attached to. You never know that the person that is calling is the wife of a hospital administrator that can get you more injury referrals through the emergency room than you ever dreamed of. You don’t know if it’s the wife, the child, a  friend, or the girlfriend of an attorney that may be able to get you as many referrals as possible. You don’t know if it’s the husband of an attorney that may be able to get you as many referrals. You don’t know if it’s the husband of a Congresswoman.

You don’t know who these people are and you make a mistake every single time. I know I’ve made a mistake every time I’ve ever minimized somebody. Every time I’ve looked at somebody and thought, okay, it was always short term thinking on my part because you’ve got to remember people are attached to a lot of other people, and so when you’re treating that person, you’re treating the whole tribe that comes with that person.

You’re treating all of their connections. If you don’t get great results with that patient, if you don’t handle that patient well, that communication goes out like a ripple out to their whole network. Say the person calls in and they have auto injury and they have headaches and migraine headaches. They are a mother of two children. The two children are 8 and 13 and they have been happily married for 15 years. Okay, well, guess what? When you’re treating that patient who has migraine headaches, you’re also treating their family. You’re treating the husband and the kids, and if you don’t get that condition resolved, think about what it does to that person’s life. If they have migraine headaches for the rest of their life, think about what that does to their marital relation. Think about what that does to their relationship with their kids.

Now, everyone wants to have great relationships, great relationships with your kids, great relationships with your spouse. But if you are in pain all the time, it can really be challenging. Here’s the husband, who does everything for the wife, and who would do anything and everything for her, and now she’s injured, she’s hurting, she’s complaining, and he doesn’t know what to do.  Here’s the kids who love their mommy. They’re going through their various stages and instead of those stages really being acknowledged, they are not. With a child, you go through these various stages. First, newborns and they’re not interacting all that much. Then all of a sudden they start interacting and you’re like, “Oh my God.” And then they become little kids and then they start talking and asking all the questions and they start going to school.

And every single one of these stages is an amazing stage. And if a person is robbed off of that because they’re in pain it’s not a good thing. And the other thing is, is that you’re participating in that person’s life and you’re participating therefore in the lives of everyone that they’re attached to. And I need you to start thinking about that. How are you training your receptionist to handle that call? Are you basically letting them know, hey, if this was the most important, take a famous actor, but if this was Tom Cruise that called in, how would your staff handle him? If this was the head of a country, how would your staff handle him? If this was the governor of the state, how would your staff handle him? If this was Bill Gates, how would your staff handle him? If this was, Taylor Swift, how would your staff handle her?

 

They may handle them different, but that’s not really where you want to be at the highest level because you never know who they are connected to. And it’s those connections and those interrelationships that can make all the difference in the world, in your center, and in your centers of growth. And people like to be acknowledged. Do you think about any experience, any customer service experience that you’ve ever had when somebody made you feel important? You felt good and remembered them. Now, why? Because it doesn’t happen very often. It doesn’t happen often enough, right? The patients that are coming in are your lifeblood in your clinic. They’re your lifeblood.

An injury patient should be treated as if that patient is going to be your patient for the rest of their lives. When they come into you for chiropractic services, whether it’s injury services or non-injury services, the attitude needs to be that this patient is going to be our patient for the rest of their lives until I retire or until they expire. They’ll be my patient until they fire me and they decide that I’m not, but up unto that point for the rest of their life, that’s how I treated them. What’s the importance of good healthcare? What’s the importance? Chiropractic is great on the injury side, it’s fantastic. Best there is for an injury side.

Now when I say best there is, I mean highly trained doctors that can get great results. I don’t mean the average mediocre doctor, that’s not what I’m talking about. There’s average mediocre doctors in every profession. No injury patients should be a part of those doctors. They should not be going to those doctors. Too high risk for long-term residual complaints. As a great doctor, when that injury patient sometimes will have the idea that this is all over when the injury over, but it’s not. Just like dentistry, your teeth have to be maintained. And so you’ll have a dentist your whole life. If you are into optimal health, your body does very well with long-term maintenance of the spine as an organ itself. That’s irrefutable, right?

So when I look at that injury patient when they came into my clinic, I looked at them and said, “Hey, they’re going to be my patient for the rest of their life.” So it’s my responsibility to do a great job for them. It’s my responsibility to set them up for having the best opportunity to have the best health that they can for the rest of their lives. So that attitude has got to permeate into the people that you train to handle these patients. It has to permeate, right? And you set the tone for that in your own center, doctors, you are the ones that set the tone. You’re the ones that train your staff and training your staff on this is really, really important. And making your staff feel important in the process is also important.

So that first contact, when somebody calls you, is that you have the ability to get their information. You take their information, you get their phone number, you’re able to text them. If I get a cell phone number and now my staff is texting them and saying, “Hey, we just want to make sure that you’re on your way and that everything’s okay.” Now it’s better if I could email and text instructions on icing. Instructions on what to do about their injury so that they can start to treat the condition themselves. Very few clinics that I’m aware of do that and they are clinics that I personally have trained.

If you do that, you’re starting to set the tone for the relationship. You’re starting to exchange with that patient before the patient’s ever done any exchange with you. You’re already starting to give to that relationship. There is a law of reciprocity that says if I give you something that you will feel obliged to give me something back. That giving me something back is to show up for the appointment. So all of these things are really, really important and they’re things that should be trained. But that initial contact with the patient, it really has to be understood. Everyone in your clinic has to understand how important these people are. The more important you make all of your patients and the more important you make them feel and the more you acknowledge them.

When is the last time you have a patient that’s been a patient of yours for two, three, four years and they come in every three months or four months or whatever it is. We acknowledged them and said, “You know what, I really appreciate you. I appreciate the fact that you make your appointments, you keep your appointments, and that you take this seriously and that you long-term maintained this.” That’s my whole mission. My whole goal. Or the patient is actually it’s an injury patient and they’re maintaining their schedule. “Hey Mary, I just want to acknowledge you that you’re keeping up with your schedule you’re doing your job and I want you to know that I appreciate that.” Acknowledge people. In my clinic, we used to have an acknowledgement day, sometimes once a month, sometimes every two weeks, where we just picked out things and we just acknowledged patients. We would just pick something out that we noticed about the person that we could admire about them.

When you start to admire people, watch what happens. Take a day, take with your staff and just have a patient admiration day. Pick out something. “Oh my gosh, your hair looks fantastic today.”  “Oh, I really like what you’re wearing today. That’s a really nice color on you. Really matches your eyes.” “I really appreciate the fact that you’re so good with your schedule at the front desk.”  “Gosh Mary, you’re so easy to schedule. We really, really appreciate that. Thank you so much for being so easy to schedule.” Just admire something about them and watch what happens. If you do that for one day, and you do it and all your staff for one day, it’ll change the way you look at things forever and you will understand more of what I just said on this podcast. So make that first contact, understand how important it is and understand how interconnected the people are and understand that you’re treating all of them. So take it with that point of view and see what happens.

 

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

 

Want to learn more about Smartinjurydoctor's Program?

Reach Us

Want to know more? We are happy to receive a message from you.

246 Tierney Drive, Suite 1,
New Richmond, WI 54017

1-800-940-6513, ext 700

Leave A Message

CONTACT US

Smart Injury Doctors
701 Richards Ave
Clearwater Florida 33755

[email protected]
Call Lee Ann at 1-800-940-6513, ext 700

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Practices That Train Together Gain Together

Practices That Train Together Gain Together

A basic concept in injury practices and in the injury practices that I consult is teams that train together, gain together.

One of the biggest errors I think that doctors make is they don’t realize how valuable their staff is.

But beyond that  they don’t realize how valuable their staff is in being able to get better injury results and being able to get better compliance and being able to get better referrals and being able to get better collections and being able to get everything.

When you take the time to train your staff on the things that really matter, the purpose and the goal of  your injury clinic can be achieved quickly and efficiently 

Your trained staff will help you to take patients that are injured, especially ligament injuries and have the patient come through care two months, three months, six months with the best possible results.

How long it takes is not the issue.

Your goal is for your patients to come through care and  have no pain, no problems at work, no problems in their life as a result of the injuries.

That is the mission.

That is the mission that each and every injury clinic should be  trying to achieve.

Now the team that trains together, gains together.

Doing that will lead to getting great injury results, getting great injury referrals, getting your compensation.

Training your team will lead to reducing your insurance problems or attorney problems because it is a team activity. It’s not a single activity.

If you want to learn alone and you want to train alone, you’ll succeed alone.

Being a solo act, you will have a much, much harder time with staff turnover and a lot of different things.

One of the biggest things that you can do in your injury practice is  train your people.

 “Okay, what am I training them in?”

Well, what are you trying to get from the patient in a consultation?

When you’re doing an examination?
Your staff should know exactly what you are trying to assess for.

They should know it completely.

I don’t care if they are in your billing department, your front desk, assist you with notes, or your office manager.

They should know every aspect of what you are doing.

When you do stress radiology, why are you doing stress radiology? What are you trying to find with it? What do the results mean?

Your staff should be trained on all of those components.

When they come in that first day, the first thing that any patient is going to interact with, is your staff, right?

Your patients should get the idea from the first person to the last they speak with, that this is the place where everyone is interested in me and knowledgeable about my care plan.

The more competent your staff is, the more confident in your clinic the patient is.

The more competent they are, the more helpful they are.

It is not just learning new systems.  “Hey, I’ve got this new scheduling system,” and learning how to schedule or, “I’ve got this new billing system,” and here’s how you’re going to bill. “I’ve got this new EMR system.”

It is actually training them about why you’re doing what you’re doing and what you’re trying to find with each and every thing you’re doing.

When you do a reexamination, every single member of your staff should know exactly what you’re doing and they should know exactly what that patient’s going through.

If that patient just came out of an exam and they have questions on something, and you left the room, or they are walking out and they have three or four questions, who are they going to get those questions answered from?

Your staff.

If your staff is trained, then your whole clinical operation is like a well-tuned machine.

It’s very organized and it’s very in rhythm, in sync.

People feel that.

They really do. And they experience that.

When they experience that, the experience is much better for them in your office.

So you need to train your staff.

The SmartInjuryDoctors® Program that I developed,  has as one the component of  training your staff. It is a major component.

We have checklists that go through each and every significant event that the patient is going to experience.

When you are talking to the patient about an MRI finding or you are talking to the patient about an excessive motion finding, how you express yourself matters to the patient.

How your team expresses themselves matters just as much when they’re getting asked questions about, “Why did you do this test,” or “Why did you do that test?”

It matters.

The tighter your group is and the tighter the communication is, the better the patient feels that they are in the right place.

Because when they feel that way, they get an experience that is far superior than if they are in a clinic that doesn’t.

That is what makes people refer.

That is what makes people remember.

When you’re looking at these little details and you are training your staff on these details, it makes all the difference in the world.

I know from my own personal practice of 17 years that that made a huge different for me and my clinic.

I trained my staff.  I always let them know why we were doing what we were doing.

You want to get to the point where your people can answer the questions that the patients are going to have because who are the patients spending time with?

Your staff.

Do you know what makes your clinic unique?

Does your staff know what makes your clinic unique?

If you know what makes your clinic unique, but you’re not teaching it to your staff, why are you withholding that?

Because you want to develop a clinic that is unique.

You want to start to differentiate yourself.

Then you want to train your staff on how you are different because that difference is what they will be proud of.

It is what they will be promoting.  You don’t want to withhold that.

You want to actually express it.

I cannot tell you how many times I have said, “Look, if you want this program to work you’ve got to train your staff, because it’s that impactful to your clinic, your clinic results, and your clinic growth.”

That is why in SmartInjuryDoctors®’s training program, I emphasize it so much.

Not training, on how to schedule or those things that I assume that you’re doing just fine but on the aspects of injury care and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Your staff has to know about that.

When your staff is really good at answering the questions, you will see better results.

You will see better compliance.

You will see less problems with insurance.

And you will see more internal referrals.

Don’t underestimate the return on investment.

The return on investment is through the roof when you train your staff.

Staff training is very, very important.

In the SmartInjuryDoctors® program, it is stressed. And stressed

Thank you for your time

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

Want to learn more about Smartinjurydoctor's Program?

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Want to know more? We are happy to receive a message from you.

246 Tierney Drive, Suite 1,
New Richmond, WI 54017

1-800-940-6513, ext 700

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CONTACT US

Smart Injury Doctors
701 Richards Ave
Clearwater Florida 33755

[email protected]
Call Lee Ann at 1-800-940-6513, ext 700

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© 2019 Biocybernetics Inc.

Mindset in a Personal Injury Practice

Mindset in a Personal Injury Practice

Mindset In A Personal Injury Practice

Mindset.

What does that mean?

Your mindset is your collection of thoughts and beliefs that shape your thought habits.

I’ve worked with enough doctors who are trying to build a practice.

One mindset is “Oh my gosh, if I want to go out and talk to attorneys about injuries, what do I need to know? What do I need to do?”

And they think, think, think, think, think, think. “Oh, I got to get better. I got to get more polished. I got to be this. I got to be that.”

It takes you away from action.

It’s the wrong thing.

You have to be protective of what you’re feeding your mind.

Your mind is a tool.

It is a tool that you use to determine or to help you to determine what you need to do in order to make something happen. That’s what it is designed to do.

It does better under situations where you are feeding it good data, where you’re feeding it good material.

A lot of doctors surround themselves by people that are constantly feeding them bad information or constantly feeding them bad news or constantly looking at the negative.

Those people say look at the negative, look at the negative, look at the negative, look at the negative.

Look what can happen. Look what could happen to you. Oh my gosh. And negative, negative, negative, negative, negative.

You are watching the news, you are watching negativity, negative, negativity, negativity.  

It is immediately going to start.

Your mindset is going to be negative.

You are going to be programming your own mind to be negative.

Just take a look.

Every one of us has this mind that we use to make things happen.

For some of us, we control it extremely well. We tell it what we need and it goes and gets it.

Those people are not dictated to.

They don’t have random thoughts that are continuously popping up and interfering with their thinking.  

They don’t have someone constantly in their head telling them things.

But some people do.

If you are a doctor out there that is like that and you want to grow a practice, you’ve got to start to actually get a positive mindset and surround yourself with people who have a like mindset of you.

Your mindset needs to be positive and you need the people around you to be positive too.  You  need people who are motivated.

I remember when I used to train, I played college level sports and when I would train, what I was looking for is someone who was better than I was at training if possible or at the bare minimum just somebody that would train with me.

I happened to be a very, very good long distance runner even though I didn’t like to do it. I played high level rugby, I played college basketball and I played some college baseball.

In basketball and in rugby you have to train, you have to run a lot. So I had to.

I would have to find somebody to train with me.

Sometimes it was multiple partners because I’d burn them out. But it made it a lot easier for me to do what I’m doing.

You need to find those partners or those group partners that will help you to be better  Someone or a group that will inspire you.

In the Smart Injury Doctors program that I run, we have a Facebook group.

The whole thing is designed to bring like-minded individuals together to support and interact with each other.

So when you get the “no”, when you get the negative, when you get the, “you can’t to this,” when you get, “that’s not the way it’s done.” When you are faced with negativity, you don’t get dumbfounded.

You have a group that is of the same mindset to support you.

You can’t get confused.

The mind is interesting.

If the mind knows, if you totally know something, it’s very hard to get confused.

But confusion is contagious.

If you’re not solid on what you know, you’re not solid on your understanding of things, then that’s a mindset, too.

If you think, “Okay, good, I just need to know this just to be good enough.” You are fairly mediocre at it.

That’s a mindset, right?

There are people that I know that won’t tolerate that.

They excel at being very, very good at what they do.

They do it until they are excellent at what they do.

Mindset is everything and what you’re feeding it is everything.

When you go home at night, what are you looking at?

If you want to grow an injury practice, are you looking at and excited about, “Hey, let me look at some information that could help me to get better results with my patients”.

Let me actually hook up with a local doctor or a local chiropractor, a local lawyer who has the same goals that I do.

Let’s go out to dinner. Let’s actually do some family things together. “Let me find others.”

Instead of being a lone ranger in the market, like many, many doctors are, you want to find local doctors that have the same mindset that you do.

You want to find people that want to improve and increase their abilities.

If possible, you want to find somebody who is better, who is faster, who is stronger, who is more able, who is quicker than you are, right?

Because that is what seriously helps you.

It also helps them because it helps them to assist another and it strengthens what they know. It strengthens what they understand.

In our Facebook group, the reason why I have doctors ask questions of other doctors is because when the doctors are answering they get motivated.

Also, the more that they can answer and help another, the more that they understand what is being taught in the program.

Mindset is really everything.

I want you to observe when you are thinking about something.

Are you having negative thoughts? Are you having positive thoughts?

Are you seeing what you can take out of this and use tomorrow and you are happy about it?

Or are you sitting there cutting it down and being critical about it?

If you’re sitting there cutting it down and being critical about it, take a look at your mindset.

Because if that is your mindset, if you’re a person who is constantly looking at something in a critical manner, you may be looking for example how am I getting ripped off? Or how is this a problem?

Then that’s what you’re going to have in return.

That is exactly what is coming to you.

That is mindset.

So if you need to shake it up and change it.

The first way that you change it is like any other thing,  you have to observe it.

You have to look at it.

I mean, when you were a kid, when you were an eight year old kid, nine year old kid, when you woke up in the morning, all you were thinking about is, what am I going to do? How much fun am I going to have? Where can I find the next piece of fun? And things were fun. They were bright, they were new.

Well, look at the mindset of you at that time and what you were looking at.

If things aren’t fun for you right now, if things are not good or they’re not going the way that you want them to, look in your mind.

Are you looking at all problems and just dwelling on these problems?

Or are you dwelling on solutions and saying, “Wow, this is an amazing game. I got a puzzle here and I get to figure out the puzzle.”

Maybe you are struggling with your practice.

You’re struggling with, “Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, how am I going to do this”?

Or how do I market?

Or how do I run staff?

Or how do I get better results?

Or how do I manage this patient?

How, how, how, how?

I am going to share with you something I read or heard and unfortunately I  can’t remember the source but I will share it with you now

When you’re struggling, you are struggling with the how.

What you should be looking for is who.

Who has already done what you are struggling with?

In other words, if you’re struggling building a marketing piece, who has already built a marketing piece?

Don’t struggle with the how.

Find the who.

It is a mindset.

If your mind is, “Oh my gosh, I can’t afford, I can’t afford, I can’t afford, I can’t afford.” Guess what? You can’t afford it.

That is the type of patient you will attract also   

The patients you’re going to attract will be of the same mindset of I can’t afford it.

If you’re thinking, “Oh, that doesn’t work, that doesn’t work. That doesn’t work.”

Guess what? It’s not going to work for you. And the people you’re going to attract, it doesn’t work for them.

That’s mindset.

In chiropractic, I remember one of the things that was taught was all things improve from the inside out.

Well, it’s very, very true.

If you’re trying to grow an injury practice, it’s the same way.

Things grow from the inside out.

Generally, when growing a practice people minimizing themselves.

You don’t need to do that at all.

Whatever that minimization is that you do, whatever that mental trick of whatever your thoughts are that you may be doing, it’s not real.

It’s not true.

You can change it in a heartbeat.

But first you got to see it and then you can change it.

Then you can improve it.

You improve it by aligning yourself with people, with events, with education, with things that align with your purpose.

They align with what it is that you are trying to do.

That’s mindset.

Start feeding your mind with great people.

Start feeding your mind with great education.

Start surrounding yourself with people that acknowledge you and they acknowledge what your goals are and it becomes a lot easier.

Sometimes you have to get rid of those that maybe don’t have the mindset that you have.

That doesn’t make them bad people.

It just means that it’s just not right for you.

There were plenty of times where I had teammates or I had people that were just not the right people for me to work out with.

They were not the right people.

They didn’t have the right attitude.

It didn’t make them bad people.

It just meant that I was not going to associate with them.

So to make things easy or make it easier, check your mindset.

Check your mindset on if you’re building a personal injury practice, check your mindset.

What does your mind focus on?

What is it looking at? Problems?

Are you constantly this problem, that problem, this problem, that problem?

Because if you are, that is what you are going to have.

You are going to have what you’re thinking about.

Sometimes because that muscle is so well worn on negativity, on negative thoughts, on negativity that it feels like it’s almost grooved in but it doesn’t have to be.

You can change it.

You’re powerful enough that you can change, the instant you decide it is changed.

That’s the beauty of it.

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

Want to learn more about Smartinjurydoctor's Program?

Reach Us

Want to know more? We are happy to receive a message from you.

246 Tierney Drive, Suite 1,
New Richmond, WI 54017

1-800-940-6513, ext 700

Leave A Message

CONTACT US

Smart Injury Doctors
701 Richards Ave
Clearwater Florida 33755

[email protected]
Call Lee Ann at 1-800-940-6513, ext 700

SEARCH THIS SITE

© 2019 Biocybernetics Inc.