How to Create Chiropractic Care Plans for Cash Practices

Running a cash practice doesn’t necessarily mean that chiropractors must sell annual care plans, lower their fees, or overbook themselves daily. Many chiropractic practices suffer from reimbursement issues when depending on patient insurance.

With approximately 35 million Americans receiving chiropractic treatments annually, it’s no wonder that creating chiropractic care plans for cash practices is a priority. Since insurance, like Medicare, doesn’t cover all the services or tests that chiropractors require, more patients are turning to cash options.

With this guide, we intend to help chiropractors understand how to use smart strategies to create care plans and more ideal and welcoming scenarios for cash payers.

Chiropractic Care Plan Goals

Goal setting is about more than the treatment’s results. It also involves looking at the plan’s short- and long-term goals. When you create chiropractic care plans, patients want to understand what they can expect immediately, the benefits that they’ll receive from their treatment plan, and their future outlook.

Short-term goals

• Reduce pain
• Restore normal joint function
• Restore muscle and balance

Long-term goals

• Restore functional independence
• Restore tolerance to daily activities

Creating Chiropractic Care Plans

Before providers create chiropractic care plans, they have initial patient consultations. They combine that information with the patient’s medical history and current pain issues to create a customized care plan.

The plan considers many variables, including the patient’s age, illness (or injury), illness (or injury) occurrence, and overall health. These plans typically include the following steps and elements.

Provide an overview of treatment options

Chiropractors have many recommendations and treatment methods, including:

• Cervical traction: Lifting the patient’s head and reducing pressure on their nerve roots and spinal discs could provide temporary arm, neck, and shoulder pain relief.
• Exercises (strengthening, stretching, and more): These recommendations can improve the patient’s balance, coordination, and strength.
• Heat (or cold) therapy: Heat opens blood vessels and cold restricts them, so chiropractors make recommendations based on the patient’s issue.
• Spinal manipulation: Chiropractors typically use their hands for making spinal adjustments.
• Spinal mobilization: This form of mobilization puts the joints through complete ranges of motion.
• Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator: This small unit sends low-voltage pulses where patients feel pain.

Recommend the number of visits

Many types of lower back pain require between one and three chiropractic visits weekly for two to four weeks. Then, patients undergo a re-examination to measure outcomes and create a maintenance plan. The recommended number of visits depends on the patient’s diagnosed condition and their overall treatment plan.

Recommend a maintenance program

Depending on the patient’s pain issues, chiropractors may recommend a maintenance program. That could include:

• Continuing with exercises following treatments
• Scheduling occasional manipulations if necessary

Outline what patients should expect during their care plans

Care plans should include what patients can expect during their first visit and expectations as they move forward through the plan. For example, during the first visit, patients can expect the chiropractor to determine if they are ready for an adjustment or if additional testing is necessary. These visits typically involve:

• The patient lying down or standing to receive their adjustment
• The chiropractor using their hands or a specialized instrument to apply directed and quick pressure to specific areas of the patient’s back or neck

Provide patient education regarding treatment evaluations

Chiropractors can use brochures, consultations, reports, and videos to provide patient education regarding treatment evaluations. Doing so provides context and meaning regarding the difference between chiropractic and medical care. Patient education also summarizes how:

• Patients and chiropractors work in partnership, meaning that what patients do at home between visits is just as essential as what happens during them
• The healing process works in stages, meaning that if a patient starts feeling better, they shouldn’t discontinue visits until the treatment plan is complete, or they might suffer a relapse

Smart Strategies for Creating a Welcoming Scenario for Cash Payers

Many practices opt for running cash practices to help reduce staff, the number of insurance claim issues, and malpractice premiums. Since patients may believe that chiropractic care must involve insurance coverage, practices should incorporate smart strategies for creating welcoming scenarios for cash payers.

Solutions like ChiroSpring help chiropractic practices create a more welcoming and ideal scenario for cash-paying patients:

• Track and report patient visits.
• Offer integrated payments.
• Create an automated billing process.
• Develop an automated patient education process.

Solutions for How to Create Chiropractic Care Plans for Cash Practices

Chiropractors must learn how to create chiropractic care plans, educate patients about them, and set up a streamlined implementation and billing process. Running cash practices makes it easier to provide care without the worry of handling insurance claims, and ChiroSpring has the solutions that chiropractors need to achieve that goal.

ChiroSpring is an all-in-one practice management and EHR system built specifically for chiropractors to help them regain face-time with patients, spend less time on back-office tasks, maintain a limited staff, and save operational costs.

To see how ChiroSpring can help you simplify how you manage your practice, reach out to one of our specialists today!