087- Corporate and On-Site Chiropractic: An interview with Kevin Christie

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Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. This week we are talking corporate and on site chiropractic care. A huge new opportunity, a huge avenue that you could potentially build your practice tremendously by stepping outside your front door. And to get the 41 1, I went straight to my good friend Dr. Kevin Christie, who has been doing it for years. Kevin has a private practice called Health Fit Chiropractic and Sports in Boca Raton and Miami. He hosts two podcasts, the Modern Desk Jockey, which is all about health and wellness for desk workers, and the Modern Chiropractic Marketing show and Health Fit Corporate Wellness. And that's where he really gets down to business on what him and I chat about today. Kevin's an awesome guy. He works super hard and he is unbelievably knowledgeable. I know you're gonna love it. Before we dive into that interview, I'll say a few things and a few words about Rock tape rock stock 2017. You've heard me talk about it. It's coming up in September, Huntington Beach. Come hang out, have fun, get continuing education. I'm going to be doing Facebook live all weekend. I'm super pumped and I heard you can use the word groovy all caps and potentially get a discount on that ticket. If you've been waiting for rocktape.com rockstock. But without further ado, here is Dr. Kevin Christie and I talking about corporate and on site chiropractic.

How's it going? I am here with Dr. Kevin Christie, a friend of mine and somebody that if you listen to the top of this episode, you are going to get a ton of value regarding on site corporate wellness and chiropractic. Kevin, thanks for taking the time and chatting with me today.

Absolutely. Thank you for the invitation and I'm looking forward to try to get some good information out there.

Cool. So I know you're gonna, I know you'll deliver. So for anybody out there that is not familiar with you and kind of what you offer, give us a little bit of background on who are you, what are you into and where's your area of expertise and interest.

Absolutely. As you mentioned, I'm Kevin Christie. I'm a chiropractor. More of a sports chiropractor. Down In South Florida. My main office is in Boca Raton. Do you have another one in Miami? And opening up another one inside of a sports training facility in Fort Lauderdale. But about six years ago, got the opportunity to add a niche to my repertoire and that was corporate chiropractic. And we've been providing on site chiropractic, ergonomics, health talks, you name it, to a lot of large corporations. And so that's been a big focus of ours as well. And that company is HealthFit Corporate Wellness.

Sweet. And I know that's what we're really gonna dive into today. You and I were talking a little bit before. I spent some time in a couple, couple of visits these last couple years in the Bay Area and I see it. And most of the chiropractors out there listening are going to be familiar. You look at Google, you look at Facebook, you look at these large corporations that are savvy and they have chiropractors on site taking care of their employees and making sure that everybody is, you know, reaching their optimal performance for, you know, they're looking at it from a work perspective, but really it impacts those individuals lives as well. And I see that trickling down to smaller and smaller companies as time goes on with a lot of interest in that. And I think that's what you've seen as well. Is that true?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, this is going on, it's getting a lot more traction, there's a lot more derivatives of it. You know, it's not just the 2,000 employee company that's got good health insurance and it's covered by insurance, but it's also the smaller companies that are willing to pay out of pocket to the provider to come on site. And that's one of our goals, is to try to educate chiropractors on making the business case for on site chiropractic. And whether that's just actually treating and doing chiropractic or if it's just doing ergonomics or if it's just having a company that's near your office that you become kind of like a preferred provider because you're going on site and you're at all their health fairs, you're doing lunch and learns, you're doing injury risk assessments, you're just being a value add to them and then they refer you patients to your private practice. So it's not only on site treatment, but that is really catching a lot of fire lately. And I'm getting a lot of chiropractors reaching out to Me for that.

Yeah, I bet. I mean, I think it's an exciting time and really it's a big opportunity, especially for those of us not only in those hyper urban areas, so to speak, like San Francisco or New York, but you know, additionally around the country. So for anybody listening out there, I know that again there's been a ton of interest, but a lot of chiropractors like where do I start? What do I need to know to even get started? And I'd love it if you and I can jam through some points that everybody out there should know, could know that they can utilize to kind of better engage with their community and have a better knowledge base of like, where do you get started with all this stuff?

Yeah, yeah. So let me preface before I dive into the seven key takeaways that I'm going to go to help build that case for you, it's first is that, you know, you need to know who to talk to. You can't just cold call up large companies. You can't walk in, you can't send them emails, you can't like, it's very difficult. You can go the LinkedIn route, it's going to be a low return. But it, if you really stick with it, you might make some good contacts. But I think one of the best ways is using your current patient base. That's what I did. And just having conversations with your patients that are desk workers and seeing where they're at, are they in hr, are they, luckily if they walk in your office, the wellness director or maybe the CEO of a smaller company. And so you want to have that direct contact or even maybe a second degree contact in the sense to where I had one recently, where she's been at the company for a long time, she has the ear of the HR and so she gave me the information and as a referral. So it was a nice little connection. And so now I have a meeting set up with them. And so that's the first thing. And then from there, when you do have that meeting, everybody's asking like, how do I make the business case for it? And so that's what I wanted to discuss today. And before I do that, one of the things, I'm obviously one of your clients and we've been implementing the evidence based chiropractor in our practice. And so I've been looking through all of the research you've been giving us. So you, you've done a great job of making a research case for chiropractic for a lot of conditions, working with medical providers and all that. You got to look at it as if you can make a business case to a medical provider. You can definitely do it for a corporation. They both can be skeptical. And so if you can learn how to do that, you're in a good start. So your information has really positioned chiropractic as a result driven, you know, field. And so it's one of the things that you have that we have that on our site so we can start there. But then now you really got to have that conversation with the company and understand what their concerns are like what's keeping them up at night as a company. And so I'm going to dive right in and one of the biggest concerns they have and this comes, I'm going to give you sources and again you can and I'm sure you'll put this in the show notes but if you want this PDF I put together and also the actual PowerPoint, just email me@Kevinoderndeskjockey.com and I'll get that to you. But the source here is a Kaiser survey of employer sponsored health benefits. I'm not going to run through the complete list of it but again you can have access to it. And it's the cost contributions, earnings and inflation since from 1999 to 2013. And essentially workers earnings and then overall inflation has only increased from 40 and 50% respectively. Whereas workers comp premiums and insurance health insurance premiums have gone up 182 and 196% respectively. And so you're seeing a situation where these companies are paying so much more money now in health insurance premiums and work comp than what they really were ever expecting. And it's becoming a huge problem on their bottom line. And as we know with corporations it's always about the bottom line no matter what.

No doubt definitely want to limit their liability there. Those numbers do not add up opportunity because they'd like to see them a lot closer to one another when the, when the expenditure on those work comp cases, et cetera is far exceeding basically the production. That's a challenging environment and really that's probably where a lot of the opportunity relies. That's some low hanging fruit, in other words.

It really is. And so I have a really cool follow up table to what you just said. And in the United States this doesn't speak to the rest of the world, but in the United States the number one concern they have and this was a global survey of health promotions was reducing health care and or insurance premium costs was the number one priority and that's over things like improving workforce engagement, morale, reducing employee absence due to sickness. All the different categories they are. Number one was reducing health care costs for these companies. And so now you're armed with what they're concerned is. And that's the key, essentially becomes the key takeaway number one that you make and that is reducing health care costs and insurance premiums is vital to the corporation's bottom line and a key focus of their cost saving efforts. So they're looking at it, they want a solution for this and that's where we need to fall into.

Right on, right on. Cool. So going with there, what's kind of the next step? That's a great conversation starter. And what else do you got for us?

Yeah, absolutely. And so there's a cool graph here where it talks about health cost estimates per 1000 FTEs, which is full time equivalents. And it's a really cool little chart of different conditions and what it's costing companies. And so the first one, I'm only going to dive into this one for the sake of brevity, but this is annual cost for individuals with each of these conditions. And it lists things like depression, obesity, arthritis. Number one on the list as far as costs, and this is medical and pharmaceutical costs is cancer. So obviously that's a tough one that we really aren't going to tackle for sure. But number two is back and neck pain and number three is other chronic pain. Right. So as a chiropractor, okay, we know we treat that. We're really good at back and neck and we're good at chronic pain. And they're dealing with such an astronomical number in those two things that it really again positions ourselves very well. And so that leads me to this last little graph here. They're spending, poor health costs are costing employees $576 billion a year and 40% of that is medical and pharmacy. The other ones are wage replacement and lost productivity because, you know, if someone goes out with surgery, you have to replace that person and then there's productivity losses. And so they do calculate those indirect costs, but 40% there. So my key takeaway number two when you're presenting to these corporations is back, neck and other chronic conditions are top cost conditions that employees are suffering from. And it is costing $576 billion per year. So it's a pretty staggering number, no doubt.

And I think that's, that's really where it comes down to is the numbers don't add up. It seems as though, you know, There's a huge opportunity for discussion based upon the fact that they're just spending a ton of money, you know, taking care of individuals that have chronic pain, that have neck and back pain. And I think, as you kind of teased at the beginning, there's probably no better service that they could utilize than chiropractic care. So it's a complete natural fit. But it's just getting those gears in motion, getting the conversation started. I love when you brought up at the top, hey, mind your patient data. Look at who's coming into your practice, because there might be a key ally or two there. So thanks. Let's keep on. Let's keep on trucking. So what else do you think is important for all of us to know?

All right, so I know you've heard of it. I think a lot of our chiropractors have heard of the Optum Health client Data study of 2011, which really was favorable for chiropractic. But in that they also had a graph that talked about the treatment of orthopedic conditions was the top cost category over cardiology, over gastroenterology and all the different ones. 17%, which was the top, was orthopedics. The next one was cardiology at 10%. So you can say, all right, their top cause category is orthopedic conditions. And that's a big one for us. And so that is number three. That's key takeaway number three is they're spending most of their money, unfortunately, on orthopedic conditions. And so obviously we feel pretty comfortable with treating a lot of orthopedic conditions. And now a lot of people are like, oh, well, what if it's surgical or what if it's this? Or, you know, all the different things. Well, I've got good news on that one. And from that same study, figure two of that is more than 80% of spine costs are associated with non surgical treatment. All right, so we know that back and neck was a big category from one of the earlier key takeaways I had. And now we have evidence here that's showing that 80% of it is needed. It needs conservative care. It's non surgical. So again, that is key takeaway number four, that spine care is the largest musculoskeletal condition cost, and 80% of those conditions are non surgical conditions. So that's a big one for us. That's building our case and we're doing a good job so far of making sure that the company understands that.

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, to a certain there is that kind of bringing it old school, the limitation of matter. I mean, if the disc is too herniated, if the extra extrusion has fallen down that lateral recess, there are things that just can't be overcome with conservative care. But as you said it, by and large the vast majority of individuals out there suffering from neck back pain and or orthopedic conditions fall well within the scope and spectrum of conservative care. Couldn't agree more.

Cool. Cool. So moving forward, this one is just, this is key takeaway number five. And this is from the Harvard Business Review study from December of 2010. I think a lot of people have seen this. I have the full PDF as well. If someone that again, they have my email address. But essentially the study showed a 6 to 1 return on investment with an effective workplace wellness program. Now that's an overall wellness program. It's not just chiropractic, but it's again, it's building the case that, okay, wellness is important. And this, I recommend getting this article and it has six key pillars that we won't be able to dive into, but what makes an effective workplace wellness and on site care is definitely very effective. So that's key takeaway number five. And then key takeaway number six, which goes back to that Optum study Health. I thought that was just one of the better studies for us as far as proving us. And number six, and that is chiropractic is the most effective and affordable option for musculoskeletal care. And it compares it to PCP and PT and orthopedics and all that. And so it really gives us, okay now we're considered here as extremely effective and a very cost affordable measure. So that's key takeaway number six.

That's great. And I think that's really, again, it emphasizes a lot of what we see in terms of, as I always say, the breadth and depth of chiropractic or research supporting chiropractic care, whether it's within a quote unquote chiropractic journal or not is out there. But it makes it so nice when there's a paper, a study, a review that frames it in an actionable way that just makes it so nice. And especially in this case where if you're speaking to a company as far as, hey, you want to take care of their, their individuals, their employees, when you can show return on investment, when you can show what you're offering is actually safe and effective. Unlike some things out there, opioids, etc. These things just start falling into place once you have the information. So yeah, awesome. What's number seven?

Number seven is direct paid on site chiropractic care increases employee utilization and potentially increases the ROI for the corporation. Now I do there is a key distinction with some companies. They are self funded in a lot of ways and not every person understands that. But there are companies where maybe CIGNA pays the bills for their employees health insurance, but the company's actually paying that. And so if you find one of those situations that's really good because you can go to them like, look, if you keep your care on site, then you've got a lot better chance of controlling the cost. You know, if they come to the chiropractor first and get, there's a lot less chance of them going to the hospital, a lot less chance of them going to the orthopedics where the bill is going to be six hundred and seven hundred dollars for the first visit. It's exponential the cost. And so that's one of the things that you want to make sure that they understand is that whether they are direct paid or not, but if they can control the utilization of their health insurance by their employees, they can negotiate lower premiums or spend less on their cost. And so by them paying you directly for care and Bob or Sally coming to see you on site, they're not using their insurance. That's a great thing. You know, that's always one of the markers of what these companies have to pay is how often and how much are your employees costing to the insurance. And so that's my key takeaway number seven.

Yeah, I think that that's great. And kind of going back to what we chatted about at the beginning and this is kind of the start of a conversation for another day. But you brought up a great point where there's a lot of companies that are self insured and it might not look that way from the outside because again they might submit through a standard third party company. But that's a huge, and this is kind of an aside, there are companies that are being funded through venture capital funds that are tens of millions of dollars that are providing on site care. So that's gonna trickle down. And if you can have the opportunity to get into some of these companies before the giants come and install their on site care, then you're gonna have a great relationship already. And you could potentially meld what their decisions are down the road as well. Once you're a trusted resource, that's kind of 10 steps down the road. The first step is to get yourself involved I love the information that you've given. There's a lot of stats in there. So say again, how can everybody listening, follow up, get this information so they can pour through it themselves and maybe learn a little bit more as well?

Yeah, just email me kevinoderndeskjockey.com and I can get you this information and anything else I can do to help out down the road. In a couple months, we are putting together an academy online that will have a lot of this information and you've been so kind to provide us with some key research. You're going to be kind of the research wing of our academy to really help make the case and provide the research. And so for right now, yeah, just email me. That'd be great.

Awesome. That sounds, that sounds great. And again, I think this is a huge opportunity because again, cover parties have done a Great job with B2C marketing, with getting out there, getting their practices built in a grassroots capacity. But when you can build some of these relationships with health, you know, with companies in your area and be, you know, kind of that preferred provider being their healthcare asset locally, that enables you, you not only to grow your practice dramatically but also expand that impact. And right now that's at the precipice point, it's at the start and you're kind of at the, you know, at the bleeding edge of that right now, so to speak. But there's a lot of chiropractors out there that are super interested in this. So I thank you for taking the time, giving the information. I encourage everybody. Email Kevin, get the data on everything he spoke of today. There's a lot of stats in there, but when you know those numbers come cold like he does, that enables that conversation to be a lot easier as you build that relationship. So again, Kevin, thanks a ton for being on and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

My pleasure.

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