How To Recession-Proof Your Chiropractic Practice

Highlights

• As a chiropractic practice owner, you must take steps to protect your business during an economic recession.
• Recession-proofing your practice means streamlining your workflows to optimize efficiency and patient care.
• Cloud-based practice management software lets you automate billing, insurance, and scheduling and simplify documentation to help you succeed in any economic climate.

Two-thirds of economists predict an economic downturn in 2023. Due to high medical costs, independent chiropractic practices are not immune to the economic recession, with nearly 43% of Americans reporting that they or someone in their household have delayed or postponed healthcare.

When an economic recession strikes, you need to maximize your chiropractic practice’s efficiency through workflow integration and productivity tools to ensure patient retention and revenue growth. Learn how an efficient chiropractic practice management software can help you survive future recessions and thrive in uncertain times.

How to Recession-Proof Your Chiropractic Practice

A recession can impact your chiropractic business’s bottom line. With potentially fewer patients in your office, you need to maximize efficiency to provide streamlined patient care, reduce operating costs, and simplify billing and insurance to see optimized cash flow.

Integrating all workflows into your practice management software ensures your practice remains sustainable and profitable during challenging economic times. ChiroTouch ‘chiropractic practice management software offers cloud-based features like digital intake tools, integrated scheduling, and automated billing and insurance.

These tools ensure your business doesn’t lose out on patient appointments or revenue in an economic downturn. Implement the following procedures to ensure profitability while meeting your patients’ needs during a recession.

Switch to a Digital Intake Process

Implementing digital intake processes for your patients helps you streamline your office procedures and minimize the cost of physical intake supplies like paper, pens, and folders. An average business with four employees spends approximately $92 per month on office supplies, adding up to over $1,000 annually.

Digital intake through a cloud-based system eliminates the need for extra expenses like storage cabinets, paper, printers, and ink, saving you money on office supplies.

With CT InForms, ChiroTouch allows patients to complete their intake, safety protocols, and consent forms online before entering your office. They can also fill out the forms on your chiropractic practice’s iPads and other connected technologies. This intake process can translate into significant revenue gains, allowing you to see more patients.

Simplify Chiropractic Billing

Only 7% of practices attempt to obtain estimated co-pays and deductibles at the time of patient service. With integrated practice management software like ChiroTouch, you can provide point-of-service payment options like online payments, credit cards, Apple Pay®, and Android Pay™ for patients to take care of their invoices and collect revenue faster.

Providing a range of payment options to your patients eases their financial burden and increases their chances of completing treatment. With one system, your staff doesn’t need multiple vendors and products to collect payments.If your practice uses insurance billing, ChiroTouch Advanced has automated insurance billing features to reduce the amount of time spent on billing tasks. Among these features are automated charge codes that connect to SOAP notes and automatic diagnosis codes to ensure accuracy when submitting claims to insurance companies.

ChiroTouch’s payment tool CT Payments further enhances your revenue cycle management. This tool streamlines end-of-day reconciliation processes and minimizes the possibility of human errors occurring in billing operations.

Automate SOAP Notes

Chiropractors spend a lot of time recording accurate SOAP notes for each patient visit. Approximately 94% of chiropractors report creating SOAP notes for their patients several times daily.However, manual documentation of SOAP notes can lead to errors. 22% of chiropractors report that poorly written SOAP notes can negatively impact patient health outcomes.

The automated SOAP notes feature in ChiroTouch saves you time while documenting patient visits accurately.

ChiroTouch’s charting section allows faster documentation by automatically populating patient information from check-ins into the subjective portion.

Customizable macro buttons and a same-as-last-time (SALT) function for frequently used text in SOAP notes help you generate Medicare-compliant SOAP notes in seconds, reducing the time you spend on documentation and saving your practice money.

Reduce Claims Denials

Timely claims payment is essential to running a successful chiropractic practice and can be the difference between thriving or falling behind in an economic downturn. Automating your claims process with the right practice management software can help you achieve a claim acceptance rate of 98.06%, improving your practice’s cash flow and increasing revenue.

Cloud-based ChiroTouch features an auto coding engine that syncs with the whole practice, reducing errors and the need for redundant data entry processes. The software also uses customizable macros to help you enter the correct CPT codes at the time of treatment, which update across the platform, preventing manual coding mistakes.

With CT MaxClear, practices track the entire claims process from beginning to end, ensuring that your claims are approved quickly. These claims are run through an automated clearinghouse to ensure timely and accurate processing.

You can also check insurance eligibility and payment responsibility in real time with CT Verify. This service connects directly to a vast network of payers and integrates with any claims clearinghouse for up-to-the-minute insurance information where and when you need it.

ChiroTouch also provides numerous resources, such as billing and coding webinars, that you can access to implement claims denial prevention strategies.

Integrate Scheduling

Integrated scheduling ensures your practice performs well in all economic conditions. Keeping your appointment book full and minimizing no-shows can improve your bottom line.

A 2020 review on the impact of no-shows on healthcare providers found that a 12% no-show rate in one laboratory led to an annual loss of $89,107. The study also found that reducing this rate by just 5% could increase the lab’s revenue by $51,769.

With ChiroTouch, you benefit from automated scheduling that saves your staff time and reduces overhead costs. Your patients can book and cancel appointments online, allowing them to reschedule rather than calling to set up another appointment. This makes booking with your practice convenient, boosting patient numbers and helping you receive excellent feedback.

ChiroTouch’s integrated appointment calendar syncs with the rest of the platform, allowing your staff to easily view the practice schedule and see which patients have checked in and where they are in their session. It also uses a color-coded feature by appointment type and sends automatic patient alerts at various points during the patient journey, so you don’t miss a patient and lose out on a referral.

Make the Move to ChiroTouch to Protect Your Chiropractic Practice

ChiroTouch practice management software provides your practice with a set of productivity-focused features that help you increase efficiency and streamline workflows for your practice. With the help of cloud-based ChiroTouch EHR and practice management software, you can put your practice in the best position to thrive during a possible economic recession.