#49 - Healthcare in the Digital Age: Leveraging Tech for Patient Care, Part 1

FAKTR, spelled F-A-K-T-R, stands for Functional and Kinetic Treatment with Rehabilitation. Over the past decade, this unique approach to treating pain and dysfunction has been utilized by healthcare providers on 6 continents. Serving as a framework that guides clinical decision-making in patient visits around the globe on a daily basis. With this podcast, our goal is simple: to bring the best and brightest in clinical education to the forefront and empower practitioners with cutting-edge, evidence-based content that improves patient outcomes and inspires healthcare providers to continually evolve their approach to treatment. In each episode, we will feature a training or interview with some of the top minds in healthcare in a short format that is easy to consume. to digest with actionable information that you can implement into practice right away. Let's get started. Hi guys, welcome to a new episode of The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome and thanks for listening. Today's episode features a new training titled Healthcare in the Digital Age: Leveraging a Virtual Platform to Scale Your Practice and Improve Patient Outcomes. 2020 was a wake-up call to healthcare providers in the physical medicine niche as they grappled with the realities and limitations of COVID-19. In a time where you can't physically be in the office with your patients, how do you still provide care? On today's episode, we will learn how 2 healthcare providers have leveraged technology to better serve their existing patients and attract new ones. They have established a platform that allows them to stay connected to their patients, And provide exceptional care free from the concerns of how another shutdown may affect their practice. So who are these innovators, you may ask? Well, Drs. Gavin Sinclair and Ryan Copleston are our guest presenters today. Dr. Gavin Sinclair was raised to embrace a natural approach to health and wellbeing. As a second-generation chiropractor, Gavin studied community health science at Brock University in Canada and later obtained his Master's of Chiropractic degree in England. He currently operates 4 private practice clinics in Scotland, and since 2006 has been educating patients on the role that proper exercise, nutrition, and a healthy mind play in promoting optimal health. Dr. Ryan Copleston has a Master's of Chiropractic from Anglo-European College of Chiropractic in Bournemouth, England. Growing up the son of a rugby coach, he quickly got involved in the game at a young age and played competitively up until he moved to Scotland. In partnership with Dr. Sinclair, Dr. Copleston provides chiropractic care and operates wellness programs both in person and through their virtual platform, Fit 545. Trust me guys, today's episode is chock-full of great information. If you're looking to take your practice to the next level, you're definitely gonna wanna take notes on this one. Let's cue the intro music and get started.

Thanks, Jessica. So I'll start today just by giving an overview of what we're going to cover. So I'll introduce ourselves. Today we're going to be going over what is Fit545. We're using this as kind of a case study to take you through our journey onto the online space, some of the successes and failures that we've had. And then Colin will take you through some of the platform options that you have when you're going online. And then finally, we'll show you a brief tour of what we've created. And then there's a special gift at the end for those of you who are tuning in. I'm Ryan. I'm going to be one of the hosts today. I came up to Scotland in 2017 and started practicing as a chiropractor. To the left, we've got Gavin Sinclair, Dr. Gavin Sinclair. Another chiropractor. He created the concept and he set up 5 clinics in Scotland and he's been a great mentor to me over the years since I started practicing. And then on the right, we've got Dr. Colin Swaller, again, another chiropractor, but also a software developer and an established digital marketing expert who specializes in marketing for chiropractors. I'm just going to briefly explain what Fit 545 is, because this is what we created when we decided to move to the online space. And it was, it had some main requirements that we wanted. So first of all, we wanted it to be able to earn a passive income. So that means that money would be coming into our office without having to physically deliver the service. Next up, it needed to be able to nurture our existing patients so that they could engage in the programs that we were offering so that they could achieve better health. Next up, it needed to attract new patients from outside the office, whether this was friends or family members or just people in your local community. Importantly, we wanted to build an online audience. So this meant we could take the successes that we had running these programs inside the office, but attract more people online and essentially become an expert in health and wellness to a lot of people. We wanted this process to be automated. We didn't want to spend any additional time going through this process, getting people in. And finally, we didn't want it to take up any additional space in our offices. So we didn't want to have renovations done to build a gym. We wanted it to all be online. And that's where we created Fit 545. That's our original program that we ran in our office, and we've transitioned that to an online platform. So it's a health and wellness platform. It's entirely online, and we decided to use challenges of different lengths to help patients in our office achieve better health. And for us, we decided to focus on 3 main areas. But if you're considering creating your own program, You can use more or less, but for us, we decided to do the big 3: fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness. Now, it's not a secret that these are the 3 major contributors to health and wellbeing, but it's the way that we decided to package it so that it was effective from a patient's perspective and easy to deliver from a practitioner's perspective as well. So the platform was designed by us. We're all chiropractors, and it was there to try and help improve the quality of care that we were providing to our patients so that we got better outcomes in the office. But at the same time, it was trying to increase the clinic revenue in exchange for a valuable service. So when we decided to start implementing these programs in the office, we had to highlight some of the main stumbling blocks that were there for patients. And we also had to consult with other practitioners in the field as well. So some of the main blocks that could get in the way of a patient is time. It has to be achievable for them to incorporate it in their daily routine. And another one is simplicity. Is the content that you are delivering simple to apply or is it too complex and overwhelming for them? So for us, we checked with our friends, our colleagues, we got the feedback so that we knew what was the most desirable things to put into this program and platform. And then we decided to implement this in our office. And it also allowed us to make sure it was low cost to both patients and practitioners. So what are some of the necessities that you need when you start offering an online program? First of all, it needs to be able to achieve better health. I think that's first and foremost. You also have a range of people coming into your office unless you're a clinic that specializes. You'll often get a variety of people with different health challenges. Coming in. So for us, it needed to be just as suitable for athletes as it did for those with certain health issues and challenges. Next up, it needed to be able to produce consistent results. That was crucial. It also needed to be of minimum time for both the patients and practitioners. So it needed to be efficient. The amount of equipment that was needed also had to be minimal. Again, another roadblock for a patient might be that they don't have access to a full gym, or the clinic doesn't have the capacity to have a renovation and build one into their clinic. So being able to do this at home with minimal equipment was essential. And this also made it affordable. You weren't having to pay for additional staff, you weren't having to pay for a renovation in your clinics. And this meant that that saving could be passed on to the patients so that they weren't paying an extortionate fee for the service. Coming back to one of our previous points, in order to get consistent results, you need to use the best available evidence that's out there. So it needed to be supported by the science. Now, we were fully aware that there's a lot of different programs out there and other healthy living strategies that do always get amazing results, but we were trying to design something that was very simple for patients to do, something easy for them to incorporate into their lives and see positive changes. So now we'll just dive into what we had on our platform or what we have on our platform. So the content. So again, we chose the 3 main areas: movement, nutrition, and mindfulness. So I'll give you a run-through of what we would give patients in each of those areas. So the first component is exercise. We would predominantly use high-intensity interval training for this component. It's extremely effective for multiple things. It results in weight loss. You can reduce your body fat. There's some positive benefits for other health challenges like insulin resistance, prediabetes. It can improve your overall strength. But most of all, it's in line with the patient's goals and expectations. Now, we wouldn't just limit the exercise recommendations to high-intensity intervals. We can recommend other activities that are beneficial. But if somebody's got limited time, you really want to give them something that gives them the most bang for their buck. And for us, it was HIIT training that worked best. So when we were designing the workouts again, we wanted to make sure it had the best effect on our patients. Whole body workouts using all 4 limbs so that the physiological effect was the best so that they could hit their goals. And there's a lot of literature out there that supports the use of HIIT training. So we simplified the workouts and keep 'em with the theme of 5-45, which is something you'll see throughout. We did 5 exercises, we used 40-second bursts, we repeated that 5 times, and there was a minute rest between each round. And this is something that we have used for years and it does produce very good results for the patients. And it only lasts 20 minutes and 40 seconds. So you can see that it's a very quick workout for the patients to be doing. on a daily basis, or for beginners, every other day or a few days a week. So next up we have nutrition. That was our second component. Now, in our original 90-day program that we ran inside the office, we used paleo diet and we used a grazing style of consumption. We advised consuming 5 times a day in smaller amounts. There was 3 main meals and 2 snacks. There are a lot of diets out there, but for us, we just Chose one that reduced the amount of heavily processed and refined foods and introduced more natural whole foods into their diet. And we know that would, would produce good results for the patients. And when you do that consistently over a long, a long period of time, it changes the person's health habits and they see their state of health improve. I always say the best diet is the one that you stick to. So for us, our meals were made really simple. And easy to adapt and change if certain ingredients weren't working for them. Because again, that could be another pitfall. They just don't get on well with the nutritional plan you're giving them and they fall off. For myself, nutrition was a big passion. I used it myself when I was growing up to face some health challenges of my own. So I've reviewed a lot of diets growing up, and I do find that most of them have positive benefits. So that's why. As we developed the program, we decided to branch out into different strategies. So we've got different ones ranging from keto to vegan now that we offer patients. But something we created in the beginning was the Core 40 Food Guide. And we basically thought of 40 foods that everyone should be eating, and we divide it into 5 different groups, 8 foods in each. And this was to make sure they could all, everyone was consuming a good nutrition as a baseline. And this just helped reduce overall body inflammation so that they could see positive changes.

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And finally, we have mindfulness. So this is our 3rd component. From experience, it tends to be the one thing that people easily skip. And to be honest, it's getting more and more attention these days and something that people are wanting to offer their patients and get people doing. I don't believe it has had the emphasis it deserves, but that is changing. So again, keeping it simple, we would provide people with a morning meditation, an evening meditation, and then a daily breathing exercise that could be done in the middle of the day just to help Reduce that overall stress load so it doesn't build up over the course of a day. Again, keeping with the theme, which is what we like to do, we would do 5 minutes of meditation, 40 seconds of deep breathing, and then 5 minutes of meditation again. And that was the 10-minute morning and the 10-minute evening meditation. So when you look at the evidence, just as little as 10 minutes of meditation a day can reduce anxiety, reduce stress, and can improve sleep quality. And your overall health. So that's why we wanted to keep it simple, concise, something easy for people to do consistently over a period of time. So for us, the program, we wanted to make sure that it allowed people to hit their goals, whether that was weight loss, improving their strength, their moods, general energy, vitality, and just expressing health better. So that's what we aim to do with our platform and our program. So just to summarize, when you are creating a program, it's important to design one that does use the best available evidence that's out there. And when put into practice, this will allow patients to see huge changes in their health over the course of the challenge that you're offering. And it's something that I've had the pleasure of witnessing over the years, and it's something that's been excellent to see in my practice. So everything I've described there is what's within our service that we offer within our clinic. And this is what we offered in the clinic. And then now we offer it on an online space. So for the next part of the presentation, I'm just going to take a trip down memory lane. Colin will explain some of the more technical challenges a little bit later, but I'm just going to go back and explain how it all started in the gym, actually before I moved to Scotland. So Gavin himself had already got the ball rolling. He already had a successful clinic and he just wanted to improve the service that he offered. So he ended up buying a small shop next door to his clinic and he turned it into a gym, and that's when he called it Fit 545. So just to delve into Gavin's personal story just quickly so it makes a bit more sense, he has lived and worked in Scotland for a long time, but he does have 2 kids that live in Norway. With their mum and he needed to visit them regularly. So adjusting patients full-time and taking extended trips back and forth just didn't work well in clinic because time away from the clinic equaled less revenue. So to make a long story short, he created this gym so that there was still some passive income coming into his office, which allowed him more time away with the children. So that all started in late 2015. Now, he thought this through at the time because he didn't want to hire any additional staff to run the gym because that would take away from that additional revenue that he was trying to create. And it wouldn't have lined up with the goal of having more free time to spend with the kids because he may have ended up having to manage more staff at the time. Now, what we'll do is we will just play a little video. This is a promotional video For our gym within the clinic that we had made. Okay, so I think everyone can relate that if you're in a clinic with just 1 or 2 chiropractors, that if you leave for too long, it can have an impact on your business. At the time, the gym was serving as a substitute for that time away, and the gym didn't rely on him being there all the time for it to succeed. He decided to run quarterly challenges, 4 per year, and these were 90 days long. And at the time it was a fee-for-service. So to ensure things ran themselves, what he did was he pre-programmed all the workouts onto touchscreens and this acted as a virtual personal trainer. We had all the equipment put into the pods, as we called them, just little stations so somebody could come in, they could do their workout, and then they could leave. And it would only take 20 to 30 minutes in total. And this meant no additional staff were needed. And again, that doesn't take away from the revenue it would be bringing in. At the time, he created a workbook that had the nutritional plans, had guidance, had the breathing exercises, the meditations, and it had additional support so that patients could achieve those goals that they were set out to hit. Now, that workbook that he created, funnily enough, it ended up becoming the foundation for the book. That myself and Gavin co-wrote and was published last year, which is fantastic because that small Fit540 gym became very popular. Active patients in the clinic signed up to the challenges and it got a lot of attention from family and friends. And it also allowed people to see the clinic, become aware of it, and come in and use other services on offer. So what happened next was a bit of a learning experience for Gavin. With all the success, he did decide to try and make an app and it did get very far, but it was never actually launched for patient use. It was quite a costly process, so he just used it as a learning experience for anything, more than anything. Main downfalls of the app was it was difficult for it to evolve and it was hard to communicate with patients via that. So it just didn't really Hit all the all the things that we wanted it to, or he wanted it to. So roll on to 2017. I'd graduated. I came up to Scotland, and I could see that the gym was being used. It was attracting new patients. It it kickstarted my clinic sort of career. It aligned with my personal principles of health. It was great to have people coming in using the gym. We could talk about the different areas they're working on, their fitness, what they're eating, how much better they were feeling within themselves. And I could see that it was not just with chiropractic care that they were getting health benefits, but the additional lifestyle program that we were offering. So I do believe if you have an office, trying to offer some sort of program is hugely beneficial for your practice and for your patients. What we didn't realize at the time was that this program was going to become the foundation for the online platform that we have today. So getting online was the next reasonable step. We had hit the capacity of the gym and we wanted to start getting more people involved and joining the challenges, but we wanted to be able to reproduce these results and the quality of service we were offering in the clinic online and to a bigger audience. So Colin, who's gonna be speaking shortly, will go over some of the different options that you have when you're going online. But He came on board shortly after I joined and they started to speak about the idea. And that's when he put his brains behind the project. And ever since he's been working on the backend and it's been a massive advantage to, to the way we work it today. So over the next few years, there was a lot of trial and error. We tried using Facebook groups for a while, but again, it had certain limitations. We ran it as like a course that you can do on a group. To deliver the free components. We also tried ClickFunnels again, just running it as a course, but again, a few too many limitations. So eventually we just decided to start building our own platform, which is what we have today. So why would anyone want to expand online? Why is it an appealing thing? So I'll look at this from 2 perspectives. First, as a chiropractor, So I think as a chiropractor, we want to try and create a business that isn't solely reliant on the patients coming into the office. You have a massive audience when you are seeing people and you want to be able to add additional services for them. So you want to try and increase patient outcomes by offering these services. You also, by having this on offer, can generate new patients. They may see that you run this program and then they hear about you and then they want to try some of the other things that you're offering, such as a new patient consult to see what else you can do for them. But also, once you start going online, it allows you the opportunity to maintain engagement with these patients over the course of their care and even once they are potentially just on maintenance or coming in Periodically. And really, it doesn't increase your revenue hugely if you go online. It definitely is more costly if you were to try and recreate it in the office with the equipment. And also, you don't need any more additional staff to run these programs or using a platform. Then we look at a patient's perspective. So for them, they want a platform that's easy to follow. They don't want it to be time-consuming. It needs to be affordable and they want to know that they're going to get results by following it. Then when it's looking at the communication aspect, it's a huge addition to the value of your care if they know that you can provide support without having to come in for a face-to-face appointment, and therefore they're going to hit their goals or their health challenges are going to be helped a lot better because it's simplifying the process. I think we've got another video here, so I'm gonna watch this. This is just to highlight what we've come up—

where we are now. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for episode 50, where we wrap up part 2 of this training and talk all things tech and patient care. We will discuss how to nurture existing patients and improve outcomes using technology, the important role that tech can play in creating a system for attracting new patients, And how to build an online community to stay connected. You won't wanna miss it. Episode 50 drops in 2 weeks. You can subscribe to the Factor Podcast on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or the podcast app that works best for you. Give us a 5-star rating to help us grow the show. Every little bit helps. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel for special discounts and member perks on Factor products, live trainings, and online course offerings. To learn more, visit the Patreon link in our show notes. You'll also always find a link to download the PDF presentation from the training featured in each episode, along with a link to view the full video webinar recording if you're more of a visual learner. And last but certainly not least, we invite you to join us for a live hands-on factor training in a city near you. Next month we'll be in Orlando, Florida, April 1st and 2nd. And Davenport, Iowa on April 15th and 16th. Be sure to visit factreducation.com— that's F-A-K-T-R education dot com— to view the full course schedule, including our international course dates, and take advantage of any special discounts and offers. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R hyphen store dot com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us spread. Spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.