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How’s your Report of Findings (ROF) working for you?

One of the most important visits a patient can make to your office is the report of findings visit. Some practices give a report on the first visit. Most probably give it on the second visit. Some even do it on a third or fourth visit.

A few dislike the term and say they never do it, although I guarantee they give some kind of explanation to the patient of what is wrong and how chiropractic care will fix it.

Most ROF’s are way too complicated, especially the ones devised by various coaching systems.

Why does every consultant teach the KISS principle with patient education, but on the biggest patient education day of care (the ROF!) they advise some complex, multi-step process that even a Rhodes Scholar would have a hard time following.

The simpler you make the ROF, the better it will go for both parties involved. How complex are MD’s when describing a medical procedure? Don’t like the comparison to MD’s? OK, have you ever sat through a complex presentation for getting braces at the orthodontist? The last one I sat in on was about 5 minutes max, then another 5 minutes to work out the finances with the staff.

Buying a house may be the most complex transaction known to man, yet the title company will slide papers under your nose so fast to sign that you’re out of there in 30 minutes. They make it so simple all you do is sign your name a hundred times, go into major debt, and leave very happy!

So in honor of the KISS principle, I’m recommending 7 easy strategies for your report of findings.

1. Be prepared

This one is so easy, but I can’t tell you how many chiros fail at it! I know we all get busy and procrastinate like crazy. I’ve done it too! But nothing can make you, your staff, and our profession look bad if you don’t come in prepared. Do some kind of analysis on your x-rays. Type up a recommended care plan. Think about the questions and objections you might hear from the patient.

2. Write up financials beforehand.

Don’t go into the report with a calculator and try to come up with something on the spot. Have a very neatly prepared financial sheet with all the recommended visits typed out and the cost of each unit beside it. (i.e. 24 adjustments x $55 = 1320.) Do not complicate this sheet. It needs to be something that an 8th grader would understand. Basic math. If your patients are asking a lot of questions about the financial papers, then you’ve made it too confusing.

3. Don’t Be Salesy

Present your findings and let them speak for themselves. Show the degeneration, misalignment, bad posture, etc. Don’t say, “You will die if you don’t get this fixed! Or at the least have cancer in 5 years!” You just turned off everybody but the lonely soul who comes to you just to have someone touch them. Your emphasis needs to be on objective findings.

4. Don’t Give a Dissertation on Chiropractic

You’ve got about 10-15 minutes max to make your point. If you go on and on, people will just start drifting of. Then you are going to have to repeat everything when the financials come up. Just answer their main questions, which are: what’s the problem and how are you going to help fix it. This is no time for a 1 hour history on chiropractic, anatomy, physiology, done pathology, disc herniation rates, or any other class that put you to sleep in school. If they wanted to know all that stuff they would have gone to chiropractic school too.

5.Have Your Staff Present the Financials

One of the best things I learned in practice was letting my CA go in and present the financials. This is so rare outside our profession, that all non-chiros reading this will wonder what I’m talking about. Just tell them what you found, how your going to help fix it, and go through the recommended care plan. Then tell them, “Jane will be right in to go over the finances with you.” Jane comes in with her prepared financial plans, and sits down to explain them.

6. Give Payment Options

Have you heard of “he Expert in our profession? No? He goes by many different names, depending on which consulting group you’re in. I’ve heard many stories about the man, but never actually met him. He’s the chiropractor who personally signs up 100 out of 100 cases on a $3000 prepaid plan. That’s right, not one single patient has ever gone home to think about it in his practice, much less asked for a payment plan. But if you’re just a mortal like me, then I suggest you give 2-3 payment options. Something like a bookkeeping discount, a monthly payment, and some type of financing through a third-party.

7. Track Your Conversion Rate

While this isn’t something you do during your report of findings, it is essential to improving your rates. Each month, total up the number of new patients who started care and divide by the total number of those that showed up for the report. Less than 50% and something is seriously wrong. 60-70% needs improvement. 80-90% and you’re doing great. 100% and you’re the elusive Expert mentioned above that everyone has been dieing to meet (now get a calculator out this time and be honest!)

How long does it take to dramatically change your practice?

A lot faster than you think…

In fact, I find that most successful doctors I work with have a point in their practice where things really took off for them.

And from that day on, everything changes.

I know it was like this for me. Early on in my practice, I struggled for years trying to bring in enough new patients to grow and make a profit.

I tried all the normal stuff. Seminars, marketing gurus, chiropractic management groups, yellow pages, Val-paks, money mailers, ad displays, health fair and convention center booths, newspaper ads, spinal screenings – I even went knocking on doors after being in practice for almost two years.

After throwing countless hours and dollars at the “new patient problem”, I got a few new ones trickling in. But many of them were not very interested in care, and their conversion rate was terrible.

The problem is, that almost none of these approaches worked. Most of the marketing techniques were overpriced, outdated or too sleazy.

The problem is chiropractic marketing can be a “brutal – and very time consuming – challenge” to building and sustaining a growing practice.

For my first two years in practice, my frustration with getting quality new patients was agonizing, often making me depressed and bringing me close to tears on more than one occasion.

It’s not our fault really.

None of us learned about marketing in Chiropractic College. After spending four years and over $100,000 on my chiropractic education, I didn’t have one class on how to use effective advertising to grow my practice.

All of this led up to a fight for survival for me. Two years into practice, I was only averaging 3 new patients a month and collecting about $3000 – with an overhead of $15,000!

Describing how bad things were would not even do it justice. I was doing 2-4 spinal screenings per week and holding talks for audiences of one – both with awful results.

I got fed up with marketing, “pushing” patients to refer, hard-sell tactics – honestly I was ready to quit the profession entirely.

It wasn’t that I hated chiropractic. It was that no one could show me an effective way to market and grow my practice. I had spent thousands on marketing systems and coaches, but to what point?

My pregnant wife was struggling up three flights of stairs each day in our new “apartment home” – sometimes having to lug over 50lbs of groceries with two toddlers in tow.

This lack of effective marketing tools forced me to look outside the profession for answers. My practice depended on it. I had no time to “hope” something worked. I needed a solution fast!

At the “eleventh hour” of my practice (and just barely in time to save it) I discovered effective marketing strategies and put them into place for my practice. And I began to see results almost immediately.

Finally, real marketing that works for chiropractic. (Unlike all that other crap out there being pushed on us from advertising sales people and over-hyped chiropractic marketing gurus.)

Within 6 months from this point, my practice volume and income had increased by a multiple of 10! I was making $30,000 and could finally afford to take one day off a week to spend with my family. Later my practice continued to increase as I tweaked my marketing and conversion procedures.

Now $30k may or may not sound like a lot to you per month, depending on where you’re at now. But that’s not the point. The point is the change from $3,000 to $30,000 in such a short time span.

What this meant for me was that my kids could have a less stressful father, who spent more quality time with them. My wife could worry less about buying groceries or clothes. And we could go on that family vacation we always talked about.

What would your life be like if your income increased by a multiple of 10? What would change if it just doubled? And what would that really mean to you?

If you’re not using effective marketing, don’t wait. It can make a huge difference to more than just your practice.

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In a previous post, I gave 7 strategies for getting more traffic to your chiropractic website. Traffic is a good thing, but converting this traffic to new patients is much more important. It’s better to have 10 paying new patients per month, than to have 1000 (non-paying) visitors to your website any month that .

Here are 4 proven methods to convert your website visitors to new patients.

#1. Use a landing page.

Unless your traffic just stumbles upon your website or blog “organically” through Google or some other search engine, they should not be landing on your home page. This is especially true for paid traffic. If you are paying for people to visit your site, you do not want them to get lost in the land of 100 different menus and click options. Do you realize how many places there is to go on most home pages?

Every visitor that comes to your site is looking for a specific solution. They are there looking for the answer to their problem. If you are paying for them to arrive there, either through Pay-Per-Click or other paid means, you want to send them directly to a page made for them.

If you run an ad for the keyword “chiropractic”, you want the landing page to be all about chiropractic and how it can help them.

If your ad is for “low back pain”, you don’t want a bunch of information about sinus problems and headaches. If they are not familiar with chiropractic (most people!), then they might think you can only help sinus problems and headaches, and not their back pain.

#2. Use an Autoresponder.

An autoresponder is a software program that sends follow up messages to a recipient that has asked for information. They are usually pre-loaded in a series and can each be scheduled with a set amount of days in between.

These messages help to build a relationship and trust over time with your potential patients who otherwise would have just visited your website once, never to be seen or heard from again.

This can be very helpful for converting prospects to new patients. You can educate prospects on why they should see you for their problem. You can educate new patients on why they should follow your care plan. You can send out nutritional or general health advice. All of which can be 95% automated and very inexpensive. All that you need is an opt-in form for visitors to sign up on your landing page or blog.

#3. Use Videos.

I mentioned videos in my strategies to get chiropractic web traffic. But videos can also be used in converting traffic to new patients.

Videos on your landing pages are highly recommended. You can make a short 2-3 minute video of you the doctor speaking about how you help with their problem. Or you can use screen recording software of you doing a power point presentation. You can also have patient testimonials and your staff speak on the video.

Videos may sound difficult, but they are very easy to use. Basically, you produce the video, upload it to your website, and then just “embed” it on your webpage. If you use YouTube, these last two steps are very easy.

#4. Use Great Copywriting.

Copywriting uses words, or copy, to promote a business, product or service. The main purpose of marketing copy is to persuade the reader to act. You want your website visitors to act today. You want them to call you now and schedule an appointment. This is the point of your website.

You need to get peoples attention right away, or they will click the back button. This is done with a headline. You also need to have an offer and call to action, or the prospect will not be motivated to act. Think of your landing page like a newspaper ad. It needs to grab the readers attention and persuade them to action.

A great resource to learn basic internet copywriting is Maria Veloso’s book “Web Copy That Sells“. If you don’t want to learn copy yourself, you can hire it out. But expect to pay $1000-$3000 for a newbie copywriter, and $3000-$6000+ for a good copywriter to write your landing page, email autoresponders, and full long copy pages.

Apply these strategies to your chiropractic marketing plan, and you will see more new patients from your website.