Moore's Law. Notice the y-axis is logarithmic meaning the straight line represents exponential growth. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

In 1965, Gordon Moore (co-founder of IBM) wrote a paper where he noted that the density and performance of electronic devices had doubled approximately every 2 years from 1958 through to 1965. He predicted that this trend would continue “for at least ten years”.

Ten years later, there was no sign that this increase in hardware performance had slowed down and others predicted it would continue “for at least ten more years”.

Well, it’s now 46 years later and the trend has shown no sign of slowing down. The capabilities of digital electronic devices are still doubling about every 2 years – processing speed, memory capacity, sensors, pixels.

In fact, it’s reasonable to say that Moore’s Law describes one of the key driving forces of technological and social change in the world today.

So what does that mean to your practice? It’s simple. If you are not using this technology in your practice you are missing out on harnessing an exponential driving force that is fuelling growth across the planet. Continue reading →

The second principle of right technology is Pilzer’s Wealth Formula. With a name like that, it’s got a lot to live up to – and it certainly does. Continue reading →

Using the right technology in your practice gives you tremendous leverage to increase your success, save time and make life generally more fun… but only if it is the right technology. If it’s not, you can actually make your office less efficient as your team is strangled by PC woes.

The Three Principles of Right Technology govern what works and what doesn’t and they are well-studied in business circles. They are Pareto’s Principle, Pilzer’s wealth formula, and Moore’s law. They have a powerful synergy and you can easily use all three of the together in your practice to get greater results in less time with a lean and efficient team leaving you free to spend more time doing what you want.

Let’s talk about each of these principles in turn and then bring them all together at the end. Continue reading →

In practice there are so many things you have to keep up to date with and so many compliances you have to maintain.

Well I am very excited to announce that the latest release of Spinalogic at least makes it super easy to keep your primary practice software up-to-date with the Advanced Web Updates. Continue reading →

Mail merge is a fantastic tool in Microsoft Word (and other word processors) that allows you to take a list of patients and create personalized versions of a document template.

Marketing research has shown over and over that when you write to someone by name, they are much more likely to read what you write. Like, “Dear ~first name~”. In clinical practice the reality is that we are marketing good health to our patients and we really want them to read what we give to them.

The first step is to have the patient’s name merged right into every document they get. This way, they know that document is specifically meant for them. Straight away you will get better patient compliance.

But there are other reasons that using Mail Merge is great for your practice standards… Continue reading →

Your total practice volume is determined by just two things: how many leads you get and your conversion of those leads. Leads are a result of your marketing – internal and external – but today, I want to talk about conversion.  In many ways conversion is more powerful and certainly more important to get right first.

In your practice, every patient goes through a process. Maybe you have documented that process and maybe you haven’t but either way, you have one. At each step some patients will drop out. The rate of follow-through of your patients at each step is called your ‘conversion’. Because your patient process has many steps, the final result of how many people you can help is the direct product of each of these conversion steps.

Now here’s where it gets exciting. An improvement of any of these steps gives you (almost) the same improvement in your entire practice volume. So if you can improve just one step by 50%, you will get a 50% increase in your volume. If you can improve two steps by 50% you will get 1.5 x 1.5 = 2.25 or a 125% increase in your volume. That’s right; you can more than double your practice by using focused training in the right places.

On the other hand, if you train on a conversion point that already has 95% success, you will get at best a boring 5% improvement. So you want to be sure that your time and attention is going to where it really counts.

But just which places are the ones you need to focus on?

Today I’m going to tell you how to find out exactly where you need focus your training for maximum impact. I’m then going to tell you how to make sure you are tracking your changes and always know where you need to improve and where you are good already. Continue reading →

Once a patient has had subluxation for more than a few weeks, they always get weakening of the spine, and often shortening of ligaments leading to permanent deformity if nothing is done. Left long enough, this even leads to remodelling of the vertebrae and so irreversible bony deformity.

It is a terrible progressive loss of function and vitality that can be so easily avoided with quality chiropractic care.

While spinal adjustments are an essential part of the correction of a misaligned spine, if the postural muscles are weak and the ligaments shortened, no number of adjustments will make them right again. That takes effort on the part of the patient to do specific strengthening and corrective exercises known as ‘Rehab’.

We all know this, but it is often seen as difficult and time-consuming and is often met with resistance from patients giving us even more reason not to do it. In truth though, if we don’t hold strong for our patients and make it easy for them to do their rehab, they simply won’t get great long-lasting results.

When I was a student in my final year, I remember asking my clinic supervisor, “Dr X, what exercises should I give this patient?” His reply? “Don’t waste your time – patients never do exercises anyway.” If you don’t put enough energy on the importance of the exercises and make it easy for your patients, he’s right. But with the right approach, we have reached over 90% compliance. Continue reading →

Your CA’s time is one of your most precious commodities so you want their time spent doing the things that really count. One place where many practices waste their CA’s precious time is when the patient is leaving the practice after they have seen the doctor doing things like printing out receipts for patients at every visit. I’ve even been to one busy practice where they had a CA who sat at a desk in a back room writing out receipts all day!

The traditional departure experience goes like this: The patient has an adjustment. They go to the front desk. The CA makes their next appointment. The CA bills them for their adjustment, takes payment, then prints (or writes) a receipt which they give to the patient. This is quite a time-consuming process for both the CA and the patient and in a busy practice leads to there being a line-up of patients waiting to depart. At the very least, it means your CA is focused on administration and not on the higher needs of the patient.

With a little planning, you can eliminate this entire process which makes the patient experience smooth and effortless while saving precious CA time. Let’s break this down and see how you can eliminate each step in this boring process. Continue reading →

When a regular patient arrives in your office they need to know what to do. Most times, that will be just sitting and waiting to get called for an adjustment. On other days you will have something they need to do before their adjustment – stop at the front desk to pay some fees, get taught some exercises, get some inspirational or educational material for the day or even receive a gift!

So how do you handle all these various situations? Continue reading →

When you have machines to help you work more efficiently, they have to be maintained. You don’t want to do too much ‘cause that’s a waste of time and you don’t want to do too little ‘cause then your machines break down leaving you stranded.

Today I want to cover some basic principles of Hardware Lifecycle Management for your IT and give you a sample implementation plan. I’m going to make it really simple to make sure you keep your hardware up to date with minimal effort and expense. Continue reading →