The Benefits of Adding Brain-Based Services to Today’s Chiropractic Office
FEATURE
Trish Leigh
Ph.D., BCN
Many chiropractors would love to go “all cash” in their practices to cut out the middleman of insurance reimbursement. Many are nervous to do so and with good reason. Most chiropractic patients are accustomed to using their insurance, and they really want to use it when it comes to exams and spinal adjustments.
Instead of eliminating insurance coverage for the services that you currently offer, why not consider adding a cash-based service that can increase your income through a new profit center while also increasing your revenue from chiropractic services simultaneously? It seems like a no-brainer (pun intended) to add quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) brain mapping and neurofeedback therapy to your office.
We live in the “Era of the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies),” as entitled by the National Institute of Health. Just as during President Kennedy’s administration of the era of space exploration when money and other resources were directed toward landing on the moon, today those resources are being used to fund research and development of therapies that can help people “treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders.” Brain-based therapies are the hottest thing around these days, and there will be no turning back from this approach to health care moving forward.
Besides not missing out on future initiatives and approaches to health care, why add them to your office? Two simple reasons: (1) they are effective and scientifically proven to work for conditions of the central nervous system (your area of expertise); and (2) they are high-tech, state-of-the-art services that can make you a lot of money while helping people, if you do it right.
Need more reasons? Here they are.
Improve Outcomes for All Patients While Increasing Your Income
If you treat mostly acute and chronic pain, scientific studies show that neurofeedback therapy is highly effective in reducing pain of all types, including migraines, headaches, pain syndromes, and neuropathic pain. Therefore, neurofeedback becomes another tool to help your current patients get better faster while significantly increasing your income.
Patients with neuropathy, fibromyalgia, tinnitus, and other complex conditions respond highly to neurofeedback therapy, especially when combined with chiropractic. 5 5
Push Nonresponsive Patients into Becoming Highly Responsive Ones
Adding brain-based services provides the extra edge necessary to produce outcomes for those patients typically found to have a low response to chiropractic adjustments alone. Patients with neuropathy, fibromyalgia, tinnitus, and other complex conditions respond highly to neurofeedback therapy, especially when combined with chiropractic. Adding it to your office can be the difference between not being able to help someone and being able to improve his or her condition and quality of life.
improve Athletic Peak Performance
For the chiropractor focused on sports and peak performance, a berth of studies show that neurofeedback therapy can add points to your patients’ games by improving their brain functioning with the cascading impact on improving performance of their mind and body. Top athletes in all areas, such as Corey Liuget (NFL), Chris Kaman (NBA), Kerri Walsh-Jennings (Olympian), Bryson DeChambeau (golf), and the entire Vancouver Canuck team (NHL) have all successfully used neurofeedback for peak performance.
Prevent or Refresh Burn-out
For the burned-out chiropractor who is looking to freshen up the office and his or her mind, brain mapping and neurofeedback are interesting, effective, easy-to-implement services to include that make more money while serving patients. As new and interesting patients come to your office with conditions you have never treated, you get the opportunity to think about their cases and provide them with solutions. No more revolving door of back and neck pain. Now you will provide care for ADHD, movement disorders, head injuries, and more. Also, your chiropractic patients will want neurofeedback. With epidemic numbers of people struggling with cognitive issues, anxiety, and depression—all proven neurological conditions—most of them will need it.
Increased Referral from Trusted Sources and High In-Office “Cross-Pollination”
As many chiropractors who add laser therapy experience an increase in referrals from MDs for laser treatment specifically, the same occurs for neurofeedback therapy but from more sources. Referrals from primary care physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, school administrators, social workers, and more provide for multiple streams of new patients from new and exciting places. Of course, once referred from a trusted source, patients are eager for the niche neurological services that you provide.
Once you provide excellent, toplevel, neurofeedback therapy for patients, they become eager to receive all services from you to increase their overall health and wellness. In our office, we call this “cross-pollination.” We do not force any given service into a person’s care plan, but we make sure they are aware of how our other services can benefit them specifically. Clearly, when neurofeedback patients become chiropractic patients, we have doubled the revenue from your new profit center, which is the ultimate financial goal, while substantially improving those people’s lives, which is the overarching professional goaf
Easy, Professionally Satisfying, and Profitable: A Win-Win-Win
Win #1: Your chiropractic assistant can be trained to do all of the hands-on work, while extremely enjoying it. Additional trainings and certifications are available for your assistant if he or she is interested in improving their skills and education levels, making them feel valued and accomplished. The feeling of being able to “level up” engages assistants in your practice in a new and invigorating way. In our office, our CAs love it. They feel professionally involved and engaged each day. With increased income, we can pay them more. Thus, their efforts are rewarded in psychological and financials ways. It is rewarding for them and for us to work together in this capacity, hence, Win #2.
Win #3: What makes neurofeedback a relatively easy and fruitful cash service to implement is that, unlike chiropractic patients, patients who approach the office for neurofeedback therapy are accustomed to paying cash for the services they need and value. Tutoring, counseling, and psychotherapy services are expensive and usually are not covered by insurance for most people. The medications people take for their challenges tend to have high out-of-pocket prices for patients, which provide even greater incentive to purchase neurofeedback therapy. Additionally, most of the patients who need and want neurofeedback therapy have been to many doctors without finding help.
These factors make neurofeedback patients prequalified and ready to pay before they walk into your office. Payments between $4,500 to $8,000 can be structured to be paid up front with some residual income coming in every month. This creates influxes of larger amounts of income and a steady rise in monthly numbers over time. Who doesn’t want that?
In clinical practice, diversity in patients and services is the key to thriving, long-term success. Having many types of patients who are referred from different sources helps keep the practice fresh with new patients and new income streams. However, it must be congruent diversity to stabilize your practice over time. With scientific studies supporting its effective use for treating a wide variety of conditions, chiropractors can fit brain mapping and neurofeedback into the service model they already have established with ease and profitability. In this way, your income from cash services and insurance reimbursement can increase while seeing a wider variety of patients and being able to help them in more advanced ways.
References:
1. Dursun, E., et al., Neurofeedback in fibromyalgia syndrome, (2007). The journal of the Turkish Society of Algology 19(3):47-53 • August 2007
2. Hammond, D.C. (2007). Neurofeedback for the enhancement of athletic performance andphysical balance, The Journal of the American Board of Sport Psychology, 1(1):1-9.
3. Kayiran, S., et al., (2010). Neurofeedback intervention in fibromyalgia syndrome; a randomized, controlled, rater blind clinical trial. Appl Psychophysiology Biofeedback, 35(4): 293-302."doi: 10.1007/ s10484-010-9135-9.
4. Kubik A & Biedron A. (2013). Neurofeedback therapy in patients with acute and chronic pain syndromes—literature review and own experience, Przeglad Lekarski, 70(7):440-2
5. The National Institute of Health (2017). The BRAIN Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.braininitiative.nih.gov/.
Dr. Trish Leigh, Ph.D., BCN is considered a thought leader of optimizing brain functioning and brain-based therapies to improve mental and physicalperformance. Having been a university professor for 20 years, with multiple college degrees in different disciplines, Dr. Leigh is uniquely positioned to bring Neurofeedback Therapy to communities through her educational programs for Chiropractors and patients alike. With her Chiropractor husband, she operates a thriving Neurofeedback practice called Leigh Brain & Spine. Having a proven office system in place, Dr. Leigh spends most of her time raising her 6 children.
Dr. Leigh teaches professionals how to build a profitable neurofeedback therapy practice in 45 days through her Neurofeedback Experts program that can be found at dr.trishleigh.com/ neurofeedbackexperts.
