273- How to Grow Personal Injury in Your Chiropractic Practice

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. On today's episode, we are talking all about personal injury. You probably have heard me talk about this a little bit, but I have a business that's personal injury focused. Last year we went from 0 to a little bit over 250k in bill charges, personal injury only. And I wanted to take today's episode to really break down the exact step by step process that we utilize to do that. I think there's a lot of misinformation about out there about building personal injury. I think there's a lot of bad information and hopefully there's gonna be some good information on this episode that can give you some practical tips, thoughts and advice. Not to just to work with any attorney in your area, but to how do you find the right attorneys? That's really what it's all about. That's what we're gonna break down, give some action steps and really lay out a plan for you on today's episode. Before we get started, what's in a name? You ask? Everything. Meet Jane. The only name you'll need to remember in the EHR world. Jane is a HIPAA compliant online platform providing clinical management capabilities such as online booking, charting, scheduling, secure telehealth, invoicing, all in one easy to use system. Things like smart options, narrative and dictation make things super easy in your practice. You can learn more. Watch a demo by heading over to Jane App Cairo. That is Jane App Cairo. If you want to really take it up a notch, you can use the code EVIDENCEBASED2021 and get a 30 day GR race period as you get up and running. Nothing better than that. But on today's episode, as I said, we're talking personal injury. So here is my take on PI. I always tell this quote unquote joke, which actually isn't a joke, but it's actually the truth. You know, you walk into a chiropractic practice, you say what percentage of your practice is personal injury? They say, I don't know, 5 to 15%. And then the joke is that that probably makes up 50% of their collections. So why is personal injury important? Because. Because when done correctly, it can be very lucrative. And done correctly incidentally, does not mean you need to become A PI mill. It doesn't mean you need to change how you go about things in your practice. It means that you need to find the right partners to work with and you need to have a plan and a strategy to actually find success. That is really the key aspect you have to understand. Also, what are attorneys looking for? Patients are looking to get well as quickly as possible with the best care and the least amount of hassle and intervention. But there's a third party anytime you're in personal injury care, and that's the attorney. And specifically that's where we focused a ton of time, effort and energy. Now, incidentally, everything that we go through today is also available in the Smart Chiropractor as a complete module. So all the tools and assets that I'm going to walk you through today on this episode is also available as a totally like it's ready for you to pick it up and run with it module with the Smart Chiropractor. I'll drop that link down in the show notes, but let's get going with just the starting point then. The starting point is picking out attorneys. So you need to create and craft an attorney target list. So one of the things that we have in the module and that I use is a spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet has all the columns listed out. And I can basically go in there and put in attorneys that I want to start reaching out to. Those are my target list. Now, not every single one of those attorneys might turn out to be somebody that I love to work with. But you need to have a starting point. And let's take it one sidestep here in this conversation. And that's about setting goals and expectations. So when I say, you know, running from 0 to 250k, you need to just back into what the math is on that. If your average personal injury patient, you know, is a case value of $2,000, well, to hit 250k over the next 12 months, you need to have $22,000 a month. In personal injury, that would be 11 new patients a month. If you want it to hit a million bucks, for instance, in personal injury bill charges over the next 12 months, that's 84k a month, roughly. That's 42 patients per month. So now you start to better understand it's all about strategy and understanding in the business world. Okay, now I know that's the volume I need to have based on my case average. So then you start to say, okay, well, for 250K, that's 11 patients a month. That would be the equivalent of five and a half attorneys. So sending in two patients, right? 11 patients a month, five and a half attorneys, six attorneys times two patients per month is 12 new patients a month from PI. That is very, very achievable for almost every chiropractic practice. But many never get there because you don't have the strategy and the systems to do it. So ultimately this is a net worth equals your network type thing. You gotta craft the right attorneys that you like working with that like working with you to be able to hit your goals. So once you have your list, how do you start going about, you know, reaching out? Well, one great way to do it is to reach out to your local imaging rep. So X rays, CTs, MRI centers, they all have people on full time staff that their job is to cruise the avenues each and every day to your office and also to attorney's offices. They know who's who, they know what's what. And if they come into your office trying to get your business with the MRIs and CTs, then it is a very good idea to start asking them, hey, who do you know? Attorney wise? That would resonate with our practice. And that's a key aspect. The more that they know about you, the more that they can match you up with who they think is going to be a good contact. Not just any contact. The other thing you could do is search Google. So it's easy. Obviously it sounds almost too simple to be true, but search Google, search, see what's going on. Once you start to identify who is in your area and you start to build out that list, now you can start to take the next steps. And one of the most high impact ways that I have seen to build relationships in personal injury is to host an online or offline presentation or workshop. So we've crafted a complete research based, research backed whiplash presentation that really breaks down the latest facts. We know that a majority of individuals involved in the automobile cases have whiplash injuries. That's just the way it is. We also know that in many instances attorneys view these as if there's not a huge disc injury or not, these crazy other injuries that they are difficult to get adequate compensation for their clients with. So you being able to educate and update them on the latest research, the latest findings, what they can utilize in when they present a case in terms of the injuries, the extent of the injuries in a truthful and research based way is incredibly impactful. And the thing with this is you don't need to get sleazy cheesy or scammy to make an impact. I mean, the data and the research is out there. We scoured journals over the last 20 years. We put together the best, most up to date research based presentation all around whiplash injuries. And it's powerful. And that is something that attorneys have no problem coming to. That is something that attorneys like to learn about. And that is a true trust and rapport builder. That, that is very, very quick when you can get out there and show yourself not as, hey, come into us because we run a pit mill and we have the lowest charges, but send your, send your clients to us. And again, the beauty of this is with the math we just did, you don't need a ton of clients, you don't need a ton of new patients to make things probably sing in your practice and generate. You'll go from 0 to 250k over the next 12 months. A couple patients a month literally will do it. A dozen patients a month will easily get you over that. So now it comes down to how do you get out there? And when you get out there with the presentation, you have to promote that presentation. So we built a flyer and complete email template series. I recommend doing this. So create a flyer or you can utilize ours if you pick up our PI module and create an email series. Our email series is four emails long. The email series goes out about four weeks before the event, two weeks before the event, the week of the event and the morning of the event. And you want to substantiate and emphasize the benefits of what the attorney will learn when they come to the presentation. That is an extremely important part of it. Now the other interesting thing that you can do is sort of, you know, tease in the fact that, hey, you can kind of hook them up. If there's going to be other physicians, maybe you invite a couple medical providers to it. Now there's an opportunity to really, you know, build on the value of what you're doing so you can talk about what type of injuries occur in a low velocity crash, how to obtain, objectively showcase the real damage of quote unquote soft tissue injuries. The most recent data on whiplash and permanent impairment. Really teasing into those items that you're gonna go over in your presentation will no doubt drive more people to show up at the presentation. But if you do the presentation, number one, you need the presentation. Number two, you really need that target list to know who you're gonna reach out to. Number three, you need the email sequence in order to do it. These are all extremely impactful and important parts of getting out there and driving PI in your practice, it doesn't mean again that you need to become a PI doc. But, man, if 20, 30% of your practice was PI, you'd probably see a substantial increase in revenue. And hey, there's a lot. The other thing I look at this and I say to myself, which is why I got involved, is I looked at what was out there in the PI world. I didn't like a lot of what was going on. Sometimes people would get in an accident and they'd say, where should I go? And, man, I had trouble coming up with where they should go. So don't stick your head in the sand. If you don't like being involved in PI, chances are you've just been involved with the wrong attorneys. But the other aspect of that is there's people get out there, your patients are going to get injured anyway. You know, that's just the facts of life. There's millions upon millions, tens of millions of car accidents each and every year in the United States. So people in your community are hurting. The real thing is, are you getting out there? Do you have enough knowledge? Do you just have that basic foundation? We're talking about basic foundations here, to be able to help them without having them have to go to somebody else who's not gonna treat them like you just go somewhere else where maybe they're getting advanced interventions to go in somewhere where it's a pit mill. We don't wanna deal with that stuff. So if you're listening to this podcast, this is the importance of PI. It's just about getting things squared away, building, growing a little bit, have the revenue from it, be comfortable with it. Sometimes that's the other issue. If you've never done PI in the past, or you rarely do it, you. It's just uncomfortable and you're not able to really do your best work because it's not what you do day in and day out. So with this, it doesn't need to become 80% of your volume, but certainly it should become something that you are comfortable with. So all of this is leading up to that presentation. One of the things we put in our module directly ties into how do you host this? We break down, do you. If you're doing it online, if you're doing it in person, how do you think about this in terms of, you know, do you have it, a restaurant, your office? We break all of that down. But I want to get to the final step here, and that final step is the follow up. There's old marketing saying that 95% of the sale is in the follow up. And this holds true in the personal injury realm. You know, you go through and you have your target list. You know, you get to make some introductions with your MRI rep. You build your target list, you send emails to promote your workshop. You have the workshop now it's all about the follow up. Everybody shows up to the workshop. You want to get their name, address and email of course, so you can follow up. And it is all about the follow up. If you make a good impression, which I know if you use in our work whiplash presentation, you definitely will make a good impression. And if you make your own, I think you will as well. But it is all about the follow up. Making that good impression is step one. But where things really happen is the subsequent step. So one of the things we build out in our PI module are research briefs that can go out each and every month to those attorneys. So these are attorney focused research briefs, updating them on the latest literature. Some of it's what's cited directly in that presentation, some of it's not. But the bottom line is this gives you a monthly touch point with these attorneys so you can stay top of mind. Hardest thing to do is get that first and second referral. After you do that, now it's just a matter of watering the garden. But to get those pipes going, gotta get water through those pipes. That seems to be the most challenging part for so many docs out there. Or they get a little bit of water through the pipe and then the pipe dries up because you haven't done anything to maintain it. So those monthly research briefs we found to be a tremendously important part of contact, of staying top of mind and of driving those referrals into your practice. Couple other things just on the ancillary side. And so that's really the process. You know, get in search Google, get in touch with your local imaging reps, build your target list. We're going to give you all the information to do that. Second part of that, you know, craft your email sequence. We'll give you the email campaign, craft that email campaign to ensure that you promote that workshop that you have coming up. It can take place online or offline. We'll guide you through what that looks like, have the presentation and then follow up monthly. So the 10 research briefs are designed to basically give you a year practically. You're going to promote for about a month your workshop. You're going to follow up with those monthly research briefs and that's Going to take you around just about a full calendar year. That is how you go from 0 to 250. That is how you ultimately can build and grow personal injury portion of your practice. Now, two other things I want to talk about real quick are unattached patients. So unattached patients in many areas of the country are, you know, PI attorneys spend a lot of money in marketing. So anytime a patient comes into you and they don't have an attorney already on their case, so to speak, that is a quote, unquote unattached patient. Unattached patients are exceptionally valuable to attorneys. So this is also why you want to find out who are those attorneys that you actually like? Who would you go to yourself so you can best direct your patients to those attorneys. I will nearly guarantee you that if you, if you send an attorney, an unattached patient, you're probably going to see a few referrals because those, they're so valuable when the attorney doesn't have to spend the money marketing. But you want to make sure you're sending them to the right people and to people, you go to it yourself ultimately. So that's part of this process as well. And the final component is depositions, really being prepared to do depositions. So we break that down in our kind of guide of how to build attorney relationships. But depositions are something that they don't need to be super intimidating. You should charge for them. But ultimately, what you want to be able to do is have great documentation so you can accurately describe and portray what's gone on with the patient. So a lot of what our PI module is focused on is about building those relationships. I know if you're listening to this, you know how to take care of patients in your practice. The question is, are you having enough of those patients coming into your practice? So that's why with our personal injury module, we really focus on how can you get out there, build relationships with attorneys. And this is the exact process, as I said, that I've utilized in a business of mine. In about 12 months, we went from zero, just started about over 250k in about 12 months, a little bit over 250. And this was the process we used. So I just took our process, I made it into a module, and the docs that have used it so far, smart chiropractor members have gotten incredible results. But we've also made it available. Whether you're a smart chiropractor member right now or whether you are not a smart chiropractor member right now, you can Pick up this module if you would like to. I'll drop that link down below. If you have any questions about this, hit me up jeff@the evidencebasedchiropractor.com and before we close, I got a great email about a doctor who started using shield. So if you're looking to get factory direct pricing for your braces, tens, units and more, check out shield@supersecretsales.com ebc their founder, Dr. Steven Brown's great guy and he's willing to give you a complimentary Shield 10s and E stim unit plus free shipping on your first order. You can't go wrong with that fast shipping. Factory direct pricing. Great selection of products are available now. Email I got a doc said hey, I checked out SHIELD after listening to the podcast I picked up some stuff. Super high quality, super affordable. I love it. Great. That is a absolute win, win, win. So if you have any questions, hit me up jeff the evidencebasedchiropractor.com if you have not left a rating or review for this podcast, I'm gonna ask you to please do so. That's how more and more docs find out about it each and every week. And I hope you have a fantastic week in practice and I will talk to you soon.

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