Have you noticed that some doctors won’t meet with you unless you buy lunch for entire office? That ought to tell you something. One, he’s not interested in speaking to you and two, neither is his staff. Quite honestly, you will have better results buying lunch for a doctor’s office that is referring to you, but you don’t stay. In other words, you purchased lunch, you make sure it arrives, you make sure they know it came from you and you leave. At least staff members who were sitting there eating will say something nice about you. Like “Wow, that’s pretty nice of that practice to swing by and buy us lunch.” You probably forced that practice to have a staff meeting. Which isn’t all bad. But if you stand up there and talk for 20-30 minutes about your practice and your philosophy and everything else, believe me, if it’s kind of physician that requires a lunch in order to meet, staff and doctor have heard story and song and dance many times. In other words, if a doctor requires you to buy lunch for entire staff in order to have a few minutes of his time, you’re wasting your money and your time.

Let me ask you a question. How do doctors who don’t know anything about you feel about you trying to educate them on patient conditions? Do they appreciate it? Do they heed your advice and do they welcome it? Probably not. Of course, your attention goes to exception, Dr. Jones, who just knows that you’re best guy in treating spine conditions in state and he will listen to every word you have to say. All I’m talking about is doctors that don’t know you. When doctor says tell me a little about your practice, you start educating him about your philosophy of treatment, about how you treat a spine condition that is different than anybody else, or what different studies report, etc. And you’ll find that guy who doesn’t already know that you’re best in town will be kind of bothered by a physical therapist spouting off that they know everything. Now many physical therapists feel that they know a lot more than physicians do about physical therapy’s ability to help musculoskeletal conditions. They have to keep that to themselves. In actual fact, from point of view of doctors, they know more than physical therapists do. PT’s don’t have to accept it to be true, but they do need to accept that it’s doctor’s viewpoint when they talk to doctors.

It is because of this tendency of physical therapists and practice owners to want to educate doctors on their services, to want doctors to know they’re best physical therapists or clinicians in town, that they are not one to go out and cold call doctors. The best person to go out and represent your practice is somebody who doesn’t know anything about how to treat somebody. Let me show you how it works. Let’s say that you’ve got this reputation for your spine rehab program, that people woo over it, that it’s well know to be best in town. And somehow everyone knows. Then you have somebody who is a non-clinician go into their office and have a chance opportunity to meet with doctor. The doctor says “Well I’ve been hearing an awful lot about your back rehab program. Can you tell me a little bit about it?” The non-clinician simply says, “Well doctor, I would love to tell you all about it, but in actual fact, what I notice is a patient comes in and they can’t even sit in chair, they have to stand up and hold onto back of chair and then after a few treatments they’re walking out feeling great. I really don’t know how they do it. But all I know is that program works.” Believe it or not that will create more interest, than if you would have told them how you treat and your philosophy and what techniques you use, etc. It has a bigger impact for him not to know exactly how you treat things. Try it, you’ll see. But again, worst person to represent your practice is physical therapist or practice owner.

It’s easy to list out what may be going downhill, but ultimate question is how do you turn those things around?

The way you do that is by becoming very best administrator possible so that you can manage, train and delegate in order to create most effective and efficient machine possible. What is an administrator exactly? Well, per Webster’s College Dictionary “Administrator: n. 1. a person who manages direction of a government, business, institution or like. (Latin- administrare to assist, carry out, manage affairs of.)

There is no other person in your business that is more responsible for your business than you. And when you assign that responsibility to someone else and detach yourself from it, you get into trouble. Now, I’m not saying you should be handling all positions in office, because after all that’s what is making business control you. What I am saying is you should know every aspect of positions in your office and train those under you to handle certain tasks in their entirety and then manage them from above. This is one of most basic fundamentals of being a good administrator and when you can successfully master this fundamental you will be on your way to a happier life.