ChiroSecure's Growth Without Risk - Take Back Control of Your Staff

Hello, ChiroSecure viewers, and thank you for joining me today. I'm Kim Klapp, founder of Assistance for Chiropractic Excellence, and I'm thrilled to be celebrating our 18th year. Now, before we get started with today's topic, I want to take a moment to thank ChiroSecure. You know, not only do they provide unparalleled coverage and exceptional customer service, but they give so much back to the profession. So I really appreciate them sponsoring this program. I also appreciate you for tuning in, so be sure to say hello, like, or even love today's program. Let's get started. You know, I've always been a huge fan of systems, and while at U of M, I managed a clothing store and developed a training systems guide for their chain. Now, my first job after graduating was running the Michigan Chiropractic Council, and as their sole employee, I realized that systems are truly a lifesaver. Now, I love the acronym that systems stands for: save yourself stress, time, energy, and money. All good things. And it's important for you to recognize that systems are comprised of numerous aspects all functioning together, not just a linear procedure. It's like the difference between the model of a food chain versus the food web. So in a nutshell, what we find is that symptoms— symptoms— systems enable you to replicate whatever it is you want more of in your practice, whether it's referrals, more long-term patients, more profit, what have you. But it also helps you prevent what you don't want. You know, all those things that create stress in your practice— miscommunications, dropped balls, mishaps, you name it. So today I want to specifically talk about training systems because poor training systems cause problems. And the most prevalent ones are where the doctor feels like they're being held hostage by a team member who should— well, let's say probably no longer work in the practice. You know, it'd be better if they express their potential elsewhere. The other scenario is where the training of new CAs is so haphazard and chaotic that it creates that revolving door syndrome. Now, both of these situations are very stressful for your practice. Personally, my epiphany came over 20 years ago in our practice, and it was when I was due for my own progress re-examination, and we had a new CA who was going to perform an EMG. And as she was entering my data into the computer, I asked her to hand me a hair tie so my hair wouldn't be in the way of the sensors on my neck. And she said, well, that's okay, you can just twist your hair up and hold it on top of your head like this. Insane, right? There's no way she could get an accurate scan with me holding one hand on top of my head. So that's when I had my aha moment. You know, we had been relying on an oral tradition in our practice to train new CAs, and it was causing untold problems. You know, I just found out about that scenario. I had no idea all the other problems that it was causing. So at that point, I realized we needed to have Everything in writing to prevent this from ever happening in the future. Now, unless you're retiring soon, chances are that either through growth or replacement, you're going to hire another CA sometime in the future. You know, whether someone on your team moves away, decides to become a chiropractor— probably going to go to life— or whatever. But you don't want to force your team to keep reinventing the wheel and repeating errors that could be prevented. You know, that just creates more unnecessary stress. And as we talk about, Stress repels patients. So another reason that you want to have great training systems is it gives the doctor more freedom, freedom to spend your time doing that which only doctors can do, and CA training doesn't fall into that category. Plus, I find that most doctors are fabulous big idea people. You know, you're the visionaries, and most CAs are amazing detail people, you know, great at dotting the i's and crossing the t's. Which is just one more reason why most doctors do not do a good job at training CAs because of all the details involved in that process. Now, the only scenario which I find worse than a doctor doing the training is having the CA who's leaving and probably emotionally checked out or even negative do the training. Now, you know what happens when you make a copy of a copy of a copy, you know, where the latest version barely resembles the original. You know, if you've seen the movie Multiplicity with Michael Keaton, the freaky clone is a great example. Well, unfortunately, the same screwed up stuff happens in your office when a CA trains a CA trains a CA without effective systems. So let's talk about how to create these training systems in your office. Well, the first thing you can do, which is super simple, is to video record your training. That's going to decrease stress and save time in the future. Now there's no need to hire a production crew. Just set up a camera on a tripod and record yourself or whoever's doing the training. And that way, the next time a new team member is hired, they can get a great head start on training without taking up any of your time or your staff time. Now, this is critical since most instances when you're training a new CA, you're already in a short-staffed situation. So the more training systems you have in place, the easier that process becomes. And again, that means less stress for your practice. Now, next, you want to utilize training tools to help you train staff in a way that makes sense. And we want to be really methodical here. So the first tool is to have a training timeline to keep training on track. Now, the one I've created is an 11-week timeline for our office, and it illustrates, as you can see, day by day what should be covered. Week 1, day 1, week 1, day 2, etc., all the way through 11 weeks. So that way nothing's inadvertently skipped. And it goes beyond making sure that the new team member fills out all the appropriate forms and all the policies and becomes a new patient on day 1. But it also ensures that the training keeps on schedule. That way it doesn't just fall by the wayside when your new CA is only partially trained. You know, I find that that's an all-too-common scenario. Once a new CA is quasi-functional, you know, when they can do some of the duties, they've got some value now, well, often the training process comes to a screeching halt at that point. Well, that's not fair to the new CA or to your practice. So my 11-week, 17-page training timeline is my gift to you for watching today. Just go to chiropracticassistance.com/training. .com/timeline if you'd like it. Now, the next tool to utilize is an office systems reference guide. Now, that includes comprehensive detail on how to do just about everything in your office. Note that I don't call it a training guide. Instead, you really want to treat it as a reference guide. That's going to encourage even your veteran team members to consult it whenever necessary, you know, just like you would double-check how to spell a word. You know, we want to make it as user-friendly as possible so we keep— so that way our team can access that file from any computer in our practice for easy searches. Because really, with 300 pages of information, there's no way everybody can memorize that. So, but when it's training time, we merely print out the appropriate sections of our office systems reference guide according to the training timeline, and we give it out to our new CA. Now, if you've been putting off creating one for your practice, it sounds really daunting. You know, you're starting from scratch with absolutely nothing in writing. Trust me, as a recovering perfectionist, it's better to do something imperfectly— see— than nothing flawlessly. Again, it's better to do something imperfectly than nothing flawlessly. And I say that because it took me 4 years to compile my first version. So if you want to get a head start, you can download my table of contents at no charge from the ACE website and use that as a framework to begin. Now, still another component of an effective training system is to utilize a training log, and we keep ours in Microsoft OneNote so management and the doctors can all view the progress as it goes along. And the log should track the date that each duty was first demonstrated, when it could be accomplished with supervision, when it could be accomplished independently, and when the new team member is deemed proficient. Now, it's really important to use expectation management here to let your new CAs know exactly what to expect with training in each area. You know, so be clear what proficiency entails. So for example, in our office, it should take no more than 10 minutes for a complete X-ray series Including flexion and extension views. You also want to monitor the pace of training to avoid putting them in overwhelm mode from training too quickly, where your new CA feels like they're being hazed by a sorority and they go home and have nightmares about the practice. On the other hand of the spectrum, we don't want them in boredom mode because you're ignoring them and putting their training on the back burner. Now, I love this customer bliss quote. People respond to a lightning rod message that will give meaning to their work. The clearer the purpose, the better the results will be. You know, that's why it's really important to always start with the big picture, the why, with all of your systems, including your training systems. And that's why I developed a 2-hour Lifeline Basic Training for new CAs, because it helps get everyone started off on the right foot with a clear understanding. about chiropractic, the importance of a positive mindset, focusing on the role and ultimate goal of a CA, and the purpose with every patient interaction. So it provides that crucial foundation in addition to all the basic phone and front desk skills that they need. Remember, the bigger their why, the higher they'll fly. Now, another tool is to create scripts for everything that your team members do so that each new CA can communicate with your patients in the most effective way that we found so far. So make sure you equip your team with a list of PAT responses to commonly asked questions. Now, this tool enables congruence of information no matter whom the patient asks in your practice, whether it's the doctor, the front desk CA, the technical CA, the insurance CA, you name it. But these are questions to— I'm sorry, these are answers to the questions that come up frequently from prospective new patients on the phone, and then once they start care in your office. Now, we make it mandatory for new CAs in our practice to learn these prior to answering the phone or having any unsupervised time with our clients. Now, you also want to have PAT responses for appointment scheduling obstacles and scripts for all the scenarios that happen on the phone and at the front desk, plus scripts for appointment tracking, claims tracking, welcome consultations, financial consultations, not to mention scripting for associate doctors. And don't stop once the scripts are written. That's just the beginning. At that point, it's time to role play, role play, role play. Now, I realize that most people don't like role playing because we don't like making mistakes. However, it is so much better to get over that embarrassment and make the mistakes on each other rather than on the patients. And don't stop until it's perfect. You know, think about this. A performer wouldn't practice until a song or a scene was mostly right, only to wing it on stage later. Well, same way, we don't want chiropractic team members to stop practicing short of 100%. You know, I've never liked the concept of fake it till you make it. Instead, I prefer role-play until you make it right. Now, the reason that scripting and role-playing is so critical Is because 85%— 85%, that's huge— of one's success in life is directly related to communication skills. And communication strategies is our topic for November's ACE Chiro Team 1-hour online training course, you know, and all of the details for that are on the website chiropracticassistants.com. So what we find is that, you know, excellence is a habit. Well, communication is a habit too. So by constantly figuring out, you know, ACE is all about helping your team and your practice reach higher levels of excellence. So think about all the opportunities that your CAs have for communication, you know, whether it's at the front desk or on the phone, you know, and think of all the different levels that they could employ to make those communications better. You know, everything from, say, incorporating strategic questions, You know, so at the front desk, that might look something like, well, when did you want to come back? Obviously, that is a chance-based method, a chance-based scenario of communication, and instead upleveling that communication strategy to asking a strategic question, one that specifically only allows acceptable options, you know, and in a framework of the doctor's recommendations. So the doctor would like to see you 2 more times this week. What 2 days work best for you? So that's just one example of strategic questions, and there's, there's plenty, you know, everything from, so did you want to make a next payment? Now that would be silly. Or did you want to make a payment today? Instead, obviously be much better to say, you know, your out-of-pocket balance for today's visit is blank. How did you want to take care of that today? So again, I'm going to be taking an hour and cramming— it'll be power-packed— of communication strategies, and that's just one of the topics. In addition, another one thing you want to keep in mind is when it comes to training systems is to cross-train. You know, cross-training is super important. And the reason for that is, you know, think about it. If your CA is gone due to maternity or paternity leave, if they are on vacation, if they are out sick or with a broken leg or something like that, they've had, you know, some kind of unfortunate scenario in their life, maybe with a family member. It's so much better if everybody has been cross-trained. You know, it puts— again, it minimizes the stress in your practice. So any way that you can do that is great. In our office, we have the role of a chiropractic assistant divided up into 4 basic areas. So we have, we have x-ray exam, the technical component, the front desk component, the computer data entry, as well as the support. So again, cross-training is just another way to keep everything running so smoothly in your practice. So again, if I can help you or your team in any way reach a higher level of excellence, please feel free to reach out via phone or email. And please join us next week when our host will be Mike Misko. Thanks again to ChiroSecure for providing this forum to increase chiropractic success.