Patients Are Powerful

Posts Tagged ‘chiropractic marketing’

I have to say that as a patient advocate,  I’ve done a lot of thinking about chiropractic marketing.  Why? Well, maybe my view is skewed a bit, but I don’t like to think of doctors, especially alternative doctors like doctors of chiropractic, as “business people,” anymore than I like to think of my minister that way. And, of course, altruistically, we as patients want to believe that those who’ve studied chiropractic medicine didn’t do it  “for the money.” But, these days there seems to be a whole lot of chiropractic marketing going on, especially on the internet.

However, realistically, I know that chiropractors, like any other professional, can’t do what they love to do, i.e., help people to feel better, get out of pain, and get their life back again, without the money necessary to keep their offices open.

So, I’m going to “lighten up” my attitude towards the business needs of all chiropractors, including my own. What helped me to be more open, and less judgmental, was an article I read recently indicating that medical doctors (who, let’s face it, we’ve all sort of viewed as being influenced by the financial gains of mainstream medicine) are finding themselves “business-challenged.” That’s right! Physicians who are going to business school to get their MBA. Apparently, nationwide more doctors are finding it both useful and necessary to add business fundamentals to their core of medical know-how, according to health care organizations and observers.

The effort encompasses more than just learning tools for helping doctors run their offices; it is about reclaiming their voice in a sector that has become dominated by nonmedical professionals, such as managed care firms, professional administrators and accountants. “Physicians nowadays need to appreciate and understand business concepts and thinking,” said Dr. James Anderson, a Cornerstone Health Care pediatrician and member of the practice’s board who is working toward a business degree. “The way we train in medicine and the way we approach problems in medicine is different than in the business world.”

The conviction that physicians can no longer be blind to the ways of business is at the center of Dr. Bill Applegate’s efforts to retool the curriculum at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Applegate, dean of the medical school, said he intends to take “a slice” of Wake’s Babcock Graduate School of Management content and implement it for the medical campus’ doctors in training. He figures it may take another two years for it to happen.

Patients are powerful. If we support the efforts of chiropractors, and medical doctors, too, for that matter, to take care of business. Then, when it comes to health care costs, we will be dealing with the very professionals who offer the care, rather than big insurance companies who are definitely “in it for the money.”  In fact, I’m looking at my chiropractor in a whole, new way: He maintains the “heart of a doctor,” but he also has the mind of a business professional.

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