As I spend more time and energy discussing the importance of patient financial education and the need to begin transitioning to a cash practice, there’s an important distinction that’s showing up. If you’re inclined to think that having a cash practice is about a new financial policy and telephone scripting to handle the “Are you on my list?” question, think again. Having a cash practice is about attracting cash paying patients.
Those who cringe at the prospect of converting to a self pay practice and whose internal dialogue whispers, “My patients would never go for that,” are probably correct. Many of your current patients wouldn’t pay cash for what you do. Kinda makes you feel like the divorced dad who attempts to buy the love of his estranged children. If you’ve been “running with the wrong crowd,” that is, folks who hardly value their health, then you’ll find the diminishing reimbursement road ahead to be especially challenging.
Attracting those who value their health and who assume the personal responsibility to look after it, is fodder for a later conversation. More troubling is the revelation that many chiropractors place such little value on their services, that they imagine they wouldn’t have a practice if it weren’t for the generosity of insurance companies!
Start there.
If brushing up against the allopathic/mechanistic/victimhood side of what we euphemistically call “health care” has turned you into an expensive back pain therapist, you need some rehabilitation. Begin by tracking down some of the old timers who practiced in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Listen to their miracles, their independence and the respect they enjoyed from their patients.
“But today’s patients are different,” you counter.
You’re right. And you’re wrong. Parents still want the best for their children. More and more people want natural over artificial. Folks still seek confidence, certainty and hope. Many, like you, mistrust the medical-pharmaceutical-industrial complex. But they can’t see past your most-insurance-accepted yellow page ad, your willingness to trade your freedom for security and your eagerness to accept the cautious six visits doled out by their stingy HMO.
In the same way we pretty much get the government we deserve (by not paying attention) we pretty much have the careers we deserve. Before you can expect to attract patients ready to assume responsibility for their health, you’ll have to first take back the responsibility for your practice that you surrendered to third parties.