110- 3 Crucial Questions to Crush Your Next MD Meeting

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Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmead. This week we are focusing in on the three essential questions you must ask a medical doctor or another healthcare provider when you meet with them to have a successful referral relationship. And we are going to go through every one of them A, B and C and make sure you have a firm understanding so during your next MD meeting or meeting with another physician, you can feel comfortable and confident starting a referral relationship. Before we get started, I'll say a few words as I do each and every week about Roc Tape Rock Tape is revolutionizing the soft tissue world again with new Rockblades Mohawk. Featuring three tools in one, a surgical stainless steel hand polish tool in two attachments silicon sleeve and an ABS comb. Rockblades Mohawk unlock never before seen treatment protocols to reduce pain, improve mobility and address issues like nerve glide and neuropathy. There are 170 and you can learn more and explore educational courses featuring mohawk@rocktape.com mohawk so today we are going to talk about the three questions that you have to have in your repertoire. You have to have on hand to start building referral relationships with other healthcare providers in your community. Now here's the good thing about these questions. You don't have to remember a script number one and number two, you do not need to be necessarily extroverted. I find that if you can phrase these questions in a way that feels comfortable to you and you use them as a framework, then even the most introverted doc out there can find success during a meeting. Many docs that I know, including people that come on with the evidence based chiropractor when we do their implementation call when they're members, I ask them about their previous history, meeting with other docs and any successes or challenges that they've had. And quite often I find many chiropractors have met with mds or other healthcare providers, but it hasn't yielded the results that they've looked for. And I think there's a fundamental challenge that's held back that relationship number one, it is all about providing value to them and their their practice. Nobody cares about your practice or what you're doing until you can showcase how you make things easier and or better for them. That's just natural human Psychology, find your value add. That's very important. But really even before that, a lot of chiropractors go in. They just don't have a strategy, they don't have a strategic approach when meeting with other healthcare providers. And that will set you astray very, very quickly because without a strategic approach it's very easy dive into a pitch session and that is not what you want to have happen again. You are going to uncover what those practitioners, healthcare providers are currently doing for their patients and subsequently where you make things easier and or better for them in their practice. That is how you truly reduce barriers and reduce friction to incoming referrals. So where does this start? Well, as we know, 90% of of primary care physicians report having been asked about chiropractic care, yet a meager 11% have made a formal referral. I view that chasm and that gap as true opportunity. And to bridge that gap, to bridge that chasm and to get those referrals, you have to be able to showcase your practice in a way that is applicable to their practice. So question number one, and when I go through this framework, you know, some of these questions are relatively simplistic and that's the point. When you meet with the doc, you're gonna spend a few minutes building rapport and chit chatting. But then these three questions are essential and they build one upon another and it is about getting them to think about their practice and giving you the information necessary to again find your value add. So question number one is do you currently see a lot of spine related complaints? Do you currently see a lot of patients with musculoskeletal challenges, however you wanna phrase a question like that, that sounds rather rudimentary off the top, but I'm gonna explain to you why it's exceptionally important is that 95% of the time that Doc is gonna answer, yeah, of course we do. And historically we know 30% of a primary care physician's practice daily is related to spine or musculoskeletal care. That's a lot of people that we could be taking care of by the way. But that question is meant to have them give an affirmative response, engage them in the conversation. 95% of the time when they say yeah, of course we do. But 5% of the time what you will find and what we have found with many, many hundreds of members of the evidence based chiropractor ultimately is they may say, well no we don't. My brother in law or sister in law down the street, we refer all of our spine patients to them from the get go. That's exceedingly important information to know. If you don't ask that question, you could have a great meeting with this doc and then be banging your against a wall months later not understanding why they haven't sent you anybody. So getting a firm grip on that as question number one is very important. Question number two is what are you seeing more of? That's important too because you are getting them to paint a patient picture. Now it might be, well, we see a little bit of everything. Great, so do we, doc. It may be something to the effect of, well, we're seeing a lot of people swinging golf clubs again, so, you know, a lot of low back injuries. In the case of what the weather feels like right now, it might be we see a lot of people slipping and falling while trying to shovel their driveways or pickaxe through ice to get out their front door. So regardless of their answer, it's very likely to fall in line with what you're seeing in practice, which is great. But it also gets them to start to paint that patient picture, think about their practice and tell you about their practice. Extremely important. Number three is of course the clincher, which is what's your current treatment protocol? What do you do for these individuals? This is the meat of it. This is where you get that exceptionally valuable information that tells you what they're currently. If you're standing there before them, it's very unlikely that they're referring you an avalanche of patients. But they are doing something, that's for sure. And to understand what they're doing is imperative in order to properly position your practice. So if, if and when they respond to that question, it's 99% of the time, you know it's gonna be one of three things. Here's where things, here's where it gets great is that one of those three responses is going to be medication or NSAIDs, number one, number two, physical therapy or number three, it could be a referral to another medical doctor or specialist in their community. So now all members of the evidence based chiropractor gain access to all of this information and more reports, guides, templates, my book, ongoing research to position their practice. If you are not a member of the evidence based chiropractor and you want more referrals coming from healthcare providers in your community, please check out what we have going on at the evidence basedchiropractor.com but for all the listeners out there for you listening, I want to go through at least one of those examples and we're gonna take the first one. So let's say that doc responds with well, we typically start by treating in house with NSAIDs. I'm probably not gonna come back and say what are you nuts? That's not guideline. You know, you're guideline discordant. I'm gonna refrain from that. But one direction I may choose to take it and you can get creative with what I'm about to say. I'm gonna break it down very simply, but you can be as creative as you'd like. If a doc says to me, well we typically start by treating a house with NSAIDs, what I may say is, hey, hey. A lot of our referral partners start out the same way, but where they become frustrated are patients with GI complaints or cardiac complaints that are taking those medications that are unable to take the NSAIDS you just told me you'd like to prescribe. A lot of offices look towards ours to be able to help with those patients and we'd gladly do the same for you. So you can see right there. Basically I'm going to rephrase what I just said. I heard what you told me. I know this is a pain point for you. This and I've solved this for other people. You notice I said with our referral partners in town, AKA ain't my first rodeo. And then I talked about some specific patient archetypes that could benefit from our care when that doc is unable to do what they just told you they would like to do. In an ideal world, that is a fantastic way to begin building a relationship. And there are other examples that we go through with our members for physical therapy referrals or if they're referring to another MD or do or specialist to overcome those objections. That's absolutely crucial. I hope you can gather why obtaining this information, those three questions are you seeing spine related complaints? What are you seeing more of and what is your current treatment protocol? Why those are so exquisitely important when bridging the gap and building an initial relationship with these providers. Additionally, if you would like a little bit of more information regarding an MD meeting, you can go to the evidence based Chiropractor and actually download a free tool set toolkit that we have called the MD meeting. So if this is a lot to take in on that car ride to the office, head over to the evidencebasedchiropractor.com the resources tab and free tools and what you'll find is the MD meeting. You can download a PDF that has a lot of this information in it as well. I really truly appreciate you listening to the Evidence Based Chiropractor podcast. The listenership has grown beyond my truly my wildest dreams. So thank you. If you would be so kind as to leave us a rating or feedback on itunes, that'd be fantastic. That helps other chiropractors find us tomorrow morning. Well, actually by the time you listen to this I will be on my way home, but I'm recording this before I leave. I'm headed out on the Cairo Candy Cruise tomorrow with Billy Sticker and a bunch of other great docs and I'm gonna be talking MD referrals, marketing, research, all of that fun stuff while setting sail to beautiful Cozumel, Mexico and then headed back home on Monday. Which is probably when you're listening to this. So I hope that you have a fantastic week in practice. I hope this information was super valuable for you. If it was, also shoot me an email jeffevidencebasedchiropractor.com if you want to become a member of the Evidence Based Chiropractor, visit us@the evidencebasedchiropractor.com and I will talk to you soon.

We appreciate you joining us for this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. Learn more tips for explosive practice development@the evidencebasedchiropractor.com you can also join the Premier MD monthly membership, enabling you to use what you just heard to maximize results in your office. We look forward to providing you with more dynamic communication tools for immediate growth right here on the Evidence Based Chiropractor.