469- Improving Patient Satisfaction with Advanced Massage Chairs

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'm your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. On today's episode, I have a special guest. This is a chiropractor I met a few years ago at the National Big FCA Conference in Orlando. His name's Dr. Tim Sharp and he's the wellness account manager for Fuji Aroki. They make massage chairs. And Tim has opened my eyes. If you think massage chairs are kind of old fashioned or dated, you're gonna wanna pay attention to this episode because you might be missing out on a massive opportunity that ties directly into patient experience. Experience. So without further ado, here's my interview with Dr. Tim Sharp. Tim, let's start with a little bit about you. What inspired you to get into the world of massage chairs?

Well, as I, I told you before, you know, I did a lot of deep trigger point work. When I started, I practiced about 28, 29 years. After about nine years, I started getting chronic tendinitis in the thumbs. And I just came home one day and told my wife, I said, I'm going to buy two of those stupid massage chairs, hoping I don't have to use my hands anymore. I tested it out at one of my satellite clinics and it went over really well. My main clinic found out about it and said, hey, why don't we have chairs? It eventually grew to about six chairs in my main clinic. And what I learned was I went from spending 10 to 15 minutes an appointment down to my physical time with the patient was about three minutes. So I, I believe it extended my career. I fell in love with it and eventually started working for Fuji Aoki, which is where I, I bought all my massage chairs from.

I love it. That that is a really key part. Especially I'm going to say, well, really across the spectrum, young docs out there, you need, you need to listen and pay attention. You know, chiropractic is a physical job over time. And docs that are in their mid and later career can certainly attest to it. And what you described in terms of being able to elongate a career, it could literally be, you know, worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to you in revenue. But also the patient impact in, we're not doing too much good as chiropractors if we're not in there taking Care of people. And anything we can do to enable us to help more people is a really, really good idea. And I know docs listening and watching, they might be thinking of massage chairs from the past. And you've been in the massage chair world for a little while now and I'd love for you to maybe highlight, you know, how chairs have come such a long way in recent years and specifically related to Fuji Oroki. Why are these chairs like so effective? For the chiropractor themselves, which is an interesting point. And for their patients.

Gotcha. So I mean I'm old enough and I think the device is still around where us old timers, the old timers before me, who I am now an old timer were using the thumper, right? The two handle rub it across their back. You know, that's that, you know, the handheld massage. Then it went to the first chairs I've had way back when were the human touch. That looked like an office chair really created about three movements, you know, kneading, tapping and rolling. Which again was very popular to now our, our, our Fujiroki AI it produces 103 different movements during the massage program. And it's evolved into complete body, you know, with the compression of the arms, the calves, the foot rollers. So if you want to delve into the scientific. The mechanoreceptor stimulation you get from a massage chair is incredible. So just that al modulate pain, right. The patient doesn't know what's going on. But I mean you will get endorphin and kaphalin release during a period. So I mean we literally would have. Our office manager would go oh, Jeff was a blank today. And I'm like came into the dressing room. He was smiling, right. So you do get that relaxation you do get. I mean it just the experience that the patient gets pre and post massage is incredible. I would bring these chairs into some of my patients that had employees in the 10 to 20 range. Employees pre and post massage. They were better in the afternoon than they were in the morning. So that's kind of how the valve from me just helped me trying to help me personally to. We would just like many of you do, we would do a consultation before the first visit and people would stop me and say I know about the chairs, I've heard about the chairs. That's all I hear about is your chairs. Right. So you know, from a chiropractic perspective it decreases your treatment time. It's the patients are easier to adjust their mood changes. If you're ever running behind they don't care. I mean I've never had a patient go, I don't want another five minutes on the massage chair. Right from the patient experience they tell others but they feel better, they adjust better. The chair will actually educate them that many of them will say, oh, I didn't even know I hurt here. But that massage chair was hitting a spot. So I mean I could keep going on how this affects not only the chiropractor and their staff, but the patient benefits are hard to argue with how these chairs have evolved into an actual health device.

Yeah, I would not have even. That blows my mind. I would not have been able to guess that there were over 100 mechanisms. So to be able to, to highlight that is pretty, that is just, that's.

Just Fuji Roki chair. That's the Japanese, the full Japanese chairs. They're pretty, they're, they're different. And we have a full line from Chinese, full Chinese to design in Japan, made in China to full Japanese chairs. So when you get into that upper level movements now you're, you know, it's like a, I don't want to say Tesla or but it's like comparing a Ford to Lexus right back in the day. So the Japanese technology is just. I have a 9 year old Japanese chair that is still better than any Chinese chair on the market right now. So that type of thing.

Yeah, yeah, that, that, that type of design and ingenuity I think really comes through and I'm going to encourage everybody listening and watching to please, you know, click down in the show notes and connect with Tim and his team and see for yourself. You can see for yourself what these chairs look like and just probably how far they've come even visually compared to what you're expecting and what you see over at the Fuji Aoki site. Now Tim, one of the things we were discussing pre roll was around return on investment. This is always an important conversation for, for docs. How does this impact my revenue? And one of the things you mentioned to me was really around retention and referrals and that patient experience and patient satisfaction. I'll ask you to dig a little bit deeper. When a doc thinks about the ROI of a massage chair in their practice, how should they think about it?

So there's multiple ways to approach it. The first being long term, which is, and again I've been out now for seven years but insurance never seems to be improving. It always seems to be going the other way. So I mean the, the deductibles or the copays now are More than what insurance even reimbursed me back when I was practicing. So, so just setting yourself apart, you know, like I said, people stopping me saying, you know, I heard about the massage chairs, I want to try them, you know, when you can. And there's ways to do this very efficiently where it, it doesn't increase your overhead and it decreases your treatment time. And so that, that's the thing is, and what I did, I was a cash practice. I raised my rates $5, seeing about 175 people a week. So the number for that was just simple and simple math for me. But, but what I didn't, what I, what I didn't expect through this was the decreased treatment time, yet improving a better patient experience. So we we rarely got missed appointments. We demonstrately seen increased referrals. So there's things like that. But you, it is a thing where you will have vendors saying, you can bill for this. It is a very, very gray area and we, we don't support you in that. I mean, we will not support you. Some people are doing it and saying they're, they're getting away with it. You know, it's an ROI that you have to look at other than a billable code. It's just a billable code is a short term benefit. This is more of a long term ROI type experience. And then with our ambassador program or the ability to be, the ability to be a dealer, you don't have to sell these to patients. Patients will ask you, where can I get one? So all my chairs were basically paid for. Okay. It even evolved into, I got tired of the hassles of massage therapists. I threw two chairs on the massage rooms and charged 25 bucks a half hour. Today. I have a lot of docs doing about a buck a minute, whether it's 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes. That's a very easy passive income. So there's multiple ways to incorporate it.

Yeah, there's a couple things I want to, I want to make sure all the listeners understand with what you just said that that's really, really important. One is I appreciate the transparency and honesty around the billing. And hey, you know, there's a way to do this in the right fashion and there's a way to do this that could catch up with you and, and you guys are about doing it, I'm going to say the right way from the beginning and encouraging and, and helping the docs understand that that's really, really important. The other aspect that I want to highlight is we keep going back to this patient experience and there's many docs out there that, especially the young docs, you know, you want to set up something you're going to be proud of. You're going to be able to build, grow and develop over the decades of your, of your career. Number one, you need to be able to show up to take care of those patients. Going back to where we started this conversation, two is that patient experience. You have to think about this holistically. So understanding when somebody is, for example, as you're highlighting readjustment maybe in the reception area, that experience of what they are doing or not doing is really critically important. And that can either improve or distract from your experience. And when you're utilizing a technology, I'll classify the massage chairs as a technology for sure at this point that enables you to do your job more effectively and efficiently while improving patient experience. That is the value on that is difficult to quantify because over time you're going to see all of the compounding benefits of that. And that's something I just wanted to come back around and ensure that everybody heard because that's a critical component. And I'm going to ask you, Tim, there's a lot of docs out there, I'm just going to call it bluntly, that might falsely believed that a massage chair is what I'm going to call is a nice to have a maybe almost frivolous as opposed to a need to have if they're really looking at their business through the lens of patient experience, care and efficiency. You've highlighted a couple of these things, but I'll ask you to come back around and dig a little bit deeper. When you talk about changing the lens prism by which somebody looks from a nice to have to a need to have, what does that mean to you?

Well, for me, like I said it was for me, it started with I physically needed a different way to practice. I mean I was a manual adjuster. I did evolve into manual plus computer assisted. But I needed to spend less physical time with my hands on that patient. Okay, so that was number one. Number two, physically, as you mentioned, I, I now have bilateral carpal tunnel. I have cubital tunnel on the right, I have a slap tear on the right. I've had every injection possible in my low back. Massage chairs help me manage the spinal pain, obviously you know, the overall benefit of circulation. So number it's physically good for a chiropractor to be using a chair themselves and the staff, to be frank. So that's number one. But, and again, I had Chiropractic guilt coming out of school where, geez, I'm getting. And again, I'm an old timer. We were charging 25 cash back when I started and ended up at about 50 cash. But it was like, geez, I'm only spending, you know, I'm only spending 15 minutes with the patient and they're giving me $25 or $40 or $50. Right. Which by today's standard, that's minimal.

Right.

You felt that guilt that you had to spend 15 minutes with them doing this. The guilt went away because I did pre and post surveys and people would come in my office and do 15 minutes on a massage chair, spend 2, 3 minutes with me in the adjusting room, and I no longer had that, that cus. That. That chiropractic guilt because the surveys proved that the patients felt it was a better experience. So mentally it was good for me. The patients felt the value. Now we, we. I promote 10 minutes or less on a massage chair. That's still a long time. And you can be very efficient. If you have two to three chairs, you can see pretty adequate volume. So that patient do want to clarify the use of the massage chairs is how you dictate them. Okay. For me, I put the patients on first because that's. It was protecting my hands.

Yep.

Okay. I had a clinic where I could say, Jeff, this week this is what we're doing because I'm testing. Okay. So after a couple of years, I said, we're going to do the massage chair after the visits. Okay. And I went with the old chiropractic thing where we've adjusted you. Now we want that adjustment to settle. We're just going to have you relax, work the muscles now that the, the vertebra is moving better. Right. Okay. Kind of the old gonstead, you know, lay down after the adjustment. Okay. Much more efficient. Okay. My patients didn't like it because they were used to the benefits of pre adjustment.

Right.

But I have chiropractors doing. It's how you just like anything. It's how you introduce, if you introduce it post adjustment, that's the way it's going to be. So if you. It is a little bit more efficient to do it post adjustment. The benefits to me are a little bit better pre adjustment. But I, I know this is a volume business, so there are different ways to structure this.

That's a, that's a great point. Thank you for that. Thank you for that clarification. One thing I want to come back around to is you briefly mentioned the ambassador Program. And I'd love for you to highlight a little bit about what that Ambassador program means. I'm going to encourage anybody that has interest to click on down below, connect with you and your team to go into deeper detail, maybe just at a high level. What's the Ambassador program look like for a chiropractor?

So there's basically before the Ambassador program, how we work. This is a chiropractor would put chairs in their office. If a patient inquired about the chair, the chiropractor would come back to me. I would give them a whole sale price. They would sell for whatever profit margin they want to their patient. In sense, you are a retail store. There are some minor, I would say minor risk because in my clinic, all the patients have been on the chair. They fell in love with the chair. So it's not like they've never seen the chair before ordering it. Right? So that is your, your highest level of profit margin. So all my chairs were basically paid for over time because I would sell them that 10 to 20 chairs a year without saying my chairs are, are for sale. I have chiropractors that sell one. I have chiropractors that sell 10 a year. What we've learned over the years is, and I've been doing this in the profession now for seven years, is some chiropractors don't want that risk. They, they don't want to put a one chair. They don't have the space for one, two, three chairs. They don't have the budget right now to buy one and resell. So what we did is we did the ambassador program, which now it's just a very low risk on the chiropractic side, similar to what Tempur Pedic did with the mattresses way back when. You know where your customer, we give you a specific coupon for your customer. They go to our, our website. They, they, instead of getting a 10 discount like a guest would, they get a 15 discount off of retail. The chiropractor then gets a 10 commission. It's all automated. We have it set up so it's, it's very simple. With the landing page, you'll see a Q code. So there, there's no QR code. There's no risk. You can sign up and never sell a thing. But this gives you access to our entire catalog. Our percussion guns, our foot massagers, our portable shoulder massagers, every chair we carry. So if a patient does want to buy something without trying it and they don't like it, takes full risk off the chiropractor. Themselves. Less profit but less risk.

Yep, that is, that, that's a great, a great synopsis. Less profit but less risk. And for it, Donkey, if you believe that this is something that you may offer, as Tim said, hop on over, connect with their team, explore the catalog, have a conversation. That's how this gets started. And Tim, I'm going to ask you one more question. And for the docs listening, whether they're ready to buy or interested in purchasing a chair for themselves, really good idea. Whether they're interested in potentially purchasing a chair or for the practice, also a really good idea. You highlighted that really two chairs is the best place to start. But I'm going to ask you, for the docs listening that are unsure of where to start, what's the first step that you would recommend that they take when they're thinking about adding a massage chair to their practice?

I would have them directly contact me either via phone or email or text. We can start the conversation. Especially if it's a personal chair for their home, which I feel very strongly about. You're, you're, you're gonna get a chair, you know what I mean? We call it points, but you know, 50 to 45 to 50 points off of the retail price. Right. So it's a very, very affordable home wellness program for yourself. So just reach out. I'm glad to speak with anybody you know, at any, you know, I'm pretty available central time most days of the week. But yeah, just call me personally or email me and we can move forward.

That sounds great, Tim. I'm going to be sure to drop some links down below so docs can connect with you. I want to say thank you for coming on today. You and I connected a little while ago at a large trade show. You have been, you were then, as you are today, a complete straight shooter. I love it, I appreciate it. And that's why I'm going to encourage the docs listening. If you have questions about massage chairs, Tim is the guy to go to. As you heard today, he's going to let you know exactly where you stand, exactly the best product or service for you and exactly how ideas on how you can best implement understanding who you are as a chiropractor, as a chiropractor himself. So Tim, thank you so much for coming on today. Docs, if you're interested in bringing in massage chair into your practice and now is the time, as you're listening to this podcast, before the end of the year to now is the time to make that investment, they have great discounts going on. This enables you potentially save on taxes, those types of things. We're not lawyers and attorneys, but it enables you to really invest in your business now for next year. Tim, thank you so much for coming on and chatting today.

Thank you. Jeff.

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