Case Notes as B2B Testimonials (Get More Referrals!) | Podcast Ep. 424

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. On today's episode, we're going to talk all about case notes and the importance of case notes in your practice, how I view them, how you can implement sending out case notes to other healthcare providers in your community and, and I'll set some expectations on what you can expect when you start getting out there with those notes. We're gonna dive into that and much more. I'll also drop a link down in the show notes if you'd like to have a case notes template. This is what I provide all members of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you'd like a template to be able to get started, I'll make it super easy for you. Hop on down in the show notes, click the link, I'll hook you up with the case notes template and I'll describe exactly on this episode why the template is the way it is and why it works. Before we get started, I'll say a few words about the smart chiropractor and patient pilot. And if you'd like to reactivate your patient base in 2024, head over to thesmartchiropractor.com, schedule a quick call with our team, we'll ask you a few questions, make sure that we believe that we can help you. That's ultimately what it comes down to. But if you have hundreds, if not thousands of people in your ehr and you're not consistently reaching out, you're missing an opportunity to reactivate your patients, which is quite frankly the best opportunity you have to build, grow and develop your practice without any. It's, it's like free advertising. Get out to the people who already know, like and trust you. Head over to thesmartchiropractor.com and learn about our patient reactivation system. But as I said at the top, today we're talking case notes and I'm gonna frame this in a probably a dramatically different way than you've heard in the past, which is case notes are not, in my opinion, when we talk about sending case notes. Well, let me frame it out this way. Case notes are an integral part of reaching out to other healthcare providers in your community, specifically to those doctors that you're actively co managing with. Because it showcases a few things. Number one, that you IGN Exist. Breaking out of obscurity is the hardest thing. As a new provider or a growing provider. If everybody in your town and community knew who you were and knew exactly what you did, you would Never want for a new patient again. So all of us are looking towards breaking through obscurity. Case notes are a great way to showcase you exist. 2 they showcase you co manage. If you're not sending case notes, every patient that comes in has other doctors they're seeing. And as I not jokingly say to docs I work with, it's like you, you've been in practice 20 years and taking care of 10,000 patients and literally no other doctors know that you've taken care of these people. That's insanity, you know. But that's what happens in the healthcare world. So case notes showcase that you're actively co managing. The other thing they do is showcase your results. So here's the shift I think about case notes. Like business to business, B2B business to business testimonials. We're all clamoring for Google reviews. Why? Because they're B2C business to consumer testimonials. They're showcasing the results. Your case notes are the same way. The case notes that you send to a doctor are not work comp narratives, they are not personal injury narratives, they are not insurance notes where you're trying to prove the value to get paid. And check the box. A case note happens to have clinically relevant information on it, but is actually I view it as a marketing tool. And does it have protected health information? Yes. Does it have clinically oriented information? Absolutely. But what is the purpose of it? The purpose of it is to showcase you exist, to showcase your co managing, showcase you get great results. That's the definition of a business to business testimonial. So what should you include on a case note? Most chiropractors most of the time end up having two challenges. You're somebody listening to this and you have sent case notes in the past, but you've slowed down. There's probably two reasons for that. One, it either took you too long to ship the note out the door, it became a pain in the butt operationally. We'll address that in a moment. Number two, maybe you sent some out and you said I didn't get anything back. That's normal. Case notes alone will not flood your office with referrals. It's very rare that happens. That's why case notes are one of the pillars in what we do at the evidence based chiropractor and our MD referral program. It's case notes research and meetings after building your target list for a reason. Because case notes are designed to do one third of the work, research designed to do the other third. We'll get into research in meetings on subsequent episodes. But today we'll stay tight on case notes. But case notes will not flood your office on their own own. They'll provide you with the foundation necessary for the research and the meetings to do their job. That's a key differentiating point to understand. Now in terms of making these things as simple as possible, this is just reverse engineering success. I'll tell a little story of how this came to be. I practiced at a few different very large orthopedic groups in my career and with 50 plus doctors and, and I would see the fax machine going off all day long with case notes being received to be given to the other doctors I worked with from other providers externally. Well, guess what? Those case notes would not be looked at by those doctors, right? Then they'd be put in the patient's chart. The next time the case note would be looked at would be when the patient is in the practice, the doctor's either sitting knee to knee or walking down the hallway. That's a limited amount of time. The joke, obviously it's like yeah doc, you go to a doctor's visit, you got two minutes with the doc, right? So they're not gonna spend eight minutes reading your case note if they're trying to have a two minute visit and they're sitting in front of the patient. So the reverse engineering success is you want these things to be simple because if the doctor is single spaced in 18 pages, eh, missed opportunity. However, if it's easy to read, they can clearly see what's going on in less than 30 seconds. Now you have a really ample opportunity that they're gonna read that when they're knee to knee or walking down this hall with the patient, they're gonna read it briefly. They see what's going on in a very clear and direct manner, turn to the patient and say how's it going over there? That's a normal human interaction. At which point you probably know there's a 90 plus percent chance your patient is gonna say fantastic. That's the win that you want. So you want to have the note as simple and straightforward as possible to get the desired effect that you'd want on the back end. Otherwise it's just all for not if it's super long. The example I always use is the primary care doctor doesn't care what size screw a surgeon uses in a sur. They care whether the surgery happened, who it happened to and when it happened. The same thing holds true with your case notes. Don't get Crazy chiropractors out there. It's like I want to put every. I want to put, like, the fourth time I did Kemp's test, this happened. I did the same. Like, they don't care about that. What do they care about? Let's talk about that. You notice it's in a template. Every case note should have four bits of information on it. Patient name, date of service, diagnosis, and treatment plan. That is in plain English. Who did you see, when did you see them, what did you find, and what are you going to do? Keep it simple. If a doc can look at a note and see, for example, let's say I'm the patient, you're the doctor, that you saw me last week for sciatica, and we're going to take care of me, 10 times that, and they can read it that quickly. That's a win. Because that doctor is very likely, if they're sitting next to me, going to turn to me and say, how's it going? At which point I'm going to say, awesome. That is why case notes are critically important, but also why it's so critically important to keep them simple. So think about how many patients and let me pause on that cadence of sending. I recommend sending on your evals and your re evals, or your exams and re exams. You don't need to send every visit by any stretch of the imagination on your exams and your re exams. And do you send case notes when the patient is not referred? Yes. If you're waiting to only send a case note when a patient's referred and you haven't built any referral relationships, you ain't getting any case notes shipped out the door. So I'm not an attorney. You want to follow the guidelines of your state, the country, all of that kind of stuff, in terms of transmitting health information. But getting the doctor's information on your intake forms is a very critical part of this, because now you know where to send the case note and whether that patient was referred or not, as long as you have the consent. And again, I'm not an attorney, but you go through whatever you need to do as far as a checkbox, release form, whatever it might be in order for the patient to say yes, no problem. Then ship those notes out the door. Why? Because. Take a moment and consider how many people are in your ehr right now. Is it 500? Is it 5000? Is it 1200? Now, every one of those patients, likely a majority of them, had an exam and a re exam or eval and re eval. So Double it. Let's say you have 1,200 people in your EHR right now. I'm gonna double that. An exam and a re exam for each one of those patients. 2,400. Do you think that 2,400 case notes, aka business to business testimonials out there in your community would be better than having the zero that might be shipping out your door right now? The answer to that is obviously yes. And that is the opportunity. So case notes. This is gonna be a quick episode. Case notes critically important part of the process. If you'd like to build relationships with medical doctors in your community. Full transparency. Head over to the evidencebasedchiropractor.com it's what we do with our MD referral program. It is literally works 100% of the time when implemented, 0% when not implemented. So if you're looking for something to implement that's easy, that's tactical, that's step by step. Our program has been around a decade help thousands of docs build awesome relationships. So case notes are an integral part of that. If you have any questions, of course, feel free to hit me up. And before we wrap up, I want to say a few words about a line of sleep. If you have pillow at your house or you're selling pillows in your practice, I can't recommend align of sleep enough. It's what I use at my house. Founded by a chiropractor, sold directly through Chiropractors. Awesome product. Check it out. Alignosleep.com, i'll drop the link down below and Shockwave has taken the chiropractic world by storm. And if you're interested in bringing Shockwave into your practice this year, I recommend Stemwave and they will hook you up. As a listener of this podcast with all the bells and whistles, have a conversation. Go stemwave.com the evidence basedchiropractor have a fantastic week in practice and I will talk to you soon.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to grow faster, visit theevidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.