Are You Out of ‘Fair Exchange?’
Sometimes we can become so tangled and consumed in our practices we lose focus of just how valuable Chiropractic is. It has been my experience with guiding lots of DCs to the practice of their dreams…we all lose a bit of our MOJO, our spirit, dealing with so many people, and insurance companies that fail to see the value in our services. Do we agree with them, fight against them or make a different choice? Do you really have to exist within a corrupt system that doesn’t believe in wellness, care for kids or that pays for nothing more than a few token adjustments?
Rock bands face an eerie parallel. When all bands start, they start out playing popular songs others (famous bands) wrote called cover songs. People will accept the band if they sound like the band they are covering. They play for acceptance. Some bands never will ‘venture’ away from the soft and warm embrace of the familiar hearth of what everyone has already heard. They will never make it big playing cover songs. They must break the connection with the ‘industry norms’ and start writing their own songs. When they start writing their own songs, even their own fans don’t like them at the beginning. If they don’t ‘endure’ the critics and the nay-sayers, they will never make it big. They will go back to playing cover songs. Only the band that believes in its greatness makes it.
Seeing DCs devalue the adjustment is just like hearing a cover band. You may pay a $10 cover fee to see a cover band, but you’ll pay $75-$150 to hear an original band. When you understand your value, you will keep your ‘fair exchange’ inside or outside of insurance. What the guy or gal is doing down the street is of little interest to you.
Having gym membership fees (a variant of the ole box on the wall) is a 4G way of disguising the lowered value of the doctor and the adjustment. Putting the patient in charge of their care is never a good idea. If we look toward our Canadian brother and sister DCs (Nationalized Disease Care System) there is very little insurance coverage available and yet there are doctors who charge fees that would make most south of the border blush.
It’s all in the value you place upon your services, not what everybody else is doing.
Something most DCs don’t realize is that a difficult case that has been to several doctors before ‘settling’ on you has paid in their behalf tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for sickness. Society agrees with a disease industry paying out tens or thousands of dollars in the name of disease and maybe $1,000 in the name of health. Sounds like inequity and oppression have found their way into our profession. Why should we as Chiropractors be so inclined to work for chickenfeed when many times it’s the DC that does the heavy lifting.
Many DCs do not charge for exams or highly discount them, especially with children. How can this be? Are children not our most valuable asset?
While the rest of the profession is riding the devaluing of Chiropractic and grimly accepting the shrinking incomes, choose to be a contrarian. There are those DCs who attract patients who value what they receive and will pay first class fees inside or outside of insurance.
