Nutritional Supplementation as a Strategy for Generating Patient Satisfaction
FEATURE
NUTRITION
Todd Singleton
DC
As a chiropractor, you’re committed to helping your patients achieve the best possible outcomes. You want your patients to leave your office feeling happy, healthy, and satisfied with the level of care they received. In my experience, the best way to optimize patient satisfaction is by providing nutrition-based solutions to a variety of health-related needs. The thing is, only 5 to 12% of all adult Americans see a chiropractor on a regular basis, but almost everyone has something that they would like help with—weight loss, insomnia, allergies, or an injury that just won’t heal.1 If you provide nutritional solutions that really work, you’ll be able to dramatically increase your patient base, get better results, and make sure that everyone who leaves your office is 100% satisfied with your care.
If you’ve been struggling with bad reviews or dissatisfied patients, this is the place to start. By incorporating nutrition into your practice, you can ensure that your patients are getting top-notch care and great results while you are generating additional revenue and building your business. And happy patients make referrals.2 3 If you can get to the root of your patients’ problems by reducing dietary inflammation, they will want to tell their friends and family members about the help they received from you. This will help you continue to see more patients and help more people as you grow the practice of your dreams.
To add nutrition to your practice, you don’t have to do it all at once. You can start small and scale up as you develop the confidence to do more. Here’s how to get started:
Level 1: Display Supplements in Your Waiting Area
The easiest way to get started is to purchase a number of high-quality supplements and put them on display in your clinic (pro ffik ., ™tip: display empty bottles,
boxes, and canisters instead of actual products). Your patients will notice these supplements while they are waiting to see you, and you can train the person working at your front desk to tell your patients a little more about any products they are interested in. With this method, you can generate sales with very little work on your part.
Level 2: Add Benefit Statements to Each Product
If you’re really serious about increasing your volume of sales, add simple benefit statements to each product. For example, if you’re offering a post-workout shake, the benefit statement might say something such as, “Just add water! Drink this simple and delicious shake after a workout to build more muscle, recover faster, and give your body the nutrition it needs to look and feel 100%.” You can print out benefit statements and find an attractive way to display them next to each product. This way, when your patients inevitably stop to peruse the products you offer, they’ll see benefits that they are looking for and feel motivated to make a purchase.4 If your patients don’t know how a product can help them, they won’t be interested.
Level 3: Talk About Supplements With Your Patients
If you are willing to set aside five minutes in each appointment to talk about supplements, you can dramatically increase the number of products you sell. This, in turn, will mean that your patients are leaving with high-quality products (unlike anything they would find on the shelf at the store) that really make a difference in their recovery process.5 To talk to patients about supplements, start by explaining how they can help (“Your spine is only as healthy as your gut. To get to the bottom of this, we need to heal the problem at its source”). Your patients will likely have questions, so it can help to have educational pamphlets, booklets, and brochures available to reinforce what you are saying.
Level 4: Offer Comprehensive Nutritional Support
The best thing you can do for your patients is to provide comprehensive nutritional support. This means going one step further and counseling your patients about their dietary choices while also providing the same high-quality supplements. If a patient is only struggling with mild symptoms and eats a generally healthy diet, you might only need to recommend a few small changes to achieve the results you are looking for. But, if a patient is experiencing more severe symptoms and needs a higher level of relief, you can recommend a super-clean diet designed to completely reduce inflammation and heal the gut.6 7 You can modify your nutritional recommendations to meet each patient’s needs.
Begin by orderin some high-quality supplements and putting them on display in your office.
As you do this, you will find that the same anti-inflammatory diet can provide different results depending on how strictly it is adhered to. You can explain this to your patient in a “good, better, best” framework. A “good” diet requires that a patient eliminate junk food and hyperprocessed food from their diet in order to lay the foundation for recovery. A “better” diet goes a step further and eliminates potential sources of inflammation from foods, such as commercial dairy and red meat. The “best” diet is primarily plant-based and includes an abundance of healthy fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains. It’s up to you to figure out what your patient really needs and make an appropriate recommendation.
You don’t need to do everything all at once to get started. Begin by ordering some high-quality supplements and putting them on display in your office. Once you see how well this can work, scale up and start talking to your patients about the supplements and nutrition. You will build confidence as you go. As you begin incorporating nutritional solutions into your office, you will notice that your patients start to get better results. They will heal faster, feel better, and report greater satisfaction with your care. This can make an enormous difference in your success as a clinic. If you want to continue to build your business and make a difference in your community, start by finding ways to increase patient satisfaction. Nutrition is a good place to start because it really works and helps patients get the results they are looking for.
Dr. Todd Singleton is an author, speaker, and consultant who has been a chiropractor for more than 25 years. He ran the largest MD/DC/PT clinics in Utah before switching to an all-cash nutrition-based model in 2006. Dr. Singleton now spends his time speaking, consulting, and helping chiropractic offices all across the country.
For more information, call 801-903-7141 or visit www.ArticlesbyDrSingleton.com.
References
1. Barnes P.M., Bloom B., Nahin R.L. (2007) Complementary and alternative medicine use among adults and children: United States. National Health Statistics Reports 2008 12: 3-4.
2. Wangenheim, F., & Bayon, T. (2007). The chain from customer satisfaction via word-of-mouth referrals to new customer acquisition. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 35(2), 233249.
3. Duffy, D. L. (1998). Customer loyalty strategies. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 15(5), 435-448.
4. Anderson, J. C., & Narus, J. A. (1998). Business marketing: understand what customers value. Harvard business review, 76, 53-67.
5. Anahad, O. (2015). Knowingwhat s inyoursupplements. The New York Times. Retrieved from https:// well, blogs, nytimes. com/2015/02/12/107141/.
6. Zhang, Y.-J., Li, S., Gan, R.-Y., Zhou, T., Xu, I).P., & Li, H.-B. (2015). Impacts of Gut Bacteria on Human Health and Diseases. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 16(12), 7493-7519.
7. Cavicchia, P. R, Steele, S. E., Hurley, T. G., Hussey, J. R, Ma, Y, Ocleene, I. S., & Hebert, J. R. (2009). A New Dietary Inflammatory Index Predicts Interval Changes in Serum High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein. Lhe Journal of Nutrition, 139(12), 2365-2372.
