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Branden Race D.C. specializes in helping chiropractors increase their revenue by implementing telehealth into their personal injury practice.
In this podcast we discuss how personal injury lawyers can make connections with chiropractors, and how to optimize those relationships for everyone’s benefit.
We will cover:
1) How can personal injury attorneys make new connections with chiropractors
2) How can personal injury attorneys best use medical bills to optimize case values
3) How can personal injury attorneys and chiropractors work together to make sure clients stick to treatment plans (telehealth)
4) How can personal injury attorneys keep positive relationships going with chiropractors
5) What ethical hurdles to personal injury attorneys need to avoid when maintaining relationships with chiropractors
Branden Race on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandenrace/
Branden Race’s email: branden@ virtualpipractice.com
See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/.
Lindsey:
Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I’m your host, Lindsey Busfield.
Lawyers are always on the hunt to find new ways to attract clients. While SEO, digital marketing and ads are important, they don’t deliver a warm lead in quite the same way as a referral. Referrals generally come from one of two places, either former clients or professional networks, but professional networking can be a bit challenging. Lawyers approach other law firms or physical therapists or chiropractors to ask for referrals, only to be told that they already have a referral partnership in place. Today we’re going to be talking with chiropractor Branden Race about how to make those connections with chiropractors specifically and how to optimize those relationships for everyone’s benefit. Thank you so much for joining us, Branden.
Branden:
Thank you, Lindsey. I appreciate being here today and helping you guys learn how to make new connections.
How to Make Referral Relationships with Chiropractors
Lindsey:
Yes, it is absolutely a huge challenge that we bump into with law firms all the time, where they approach a chiropractor and say, “Hey, would really like to work with you,” and they get turned down or turned away or say, “Hey, sorry buddy. I’ve already got something in place.” So would love to pick your brain. How can personal injury attorneys make those new connections with chiropractors?
Branden:
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that us chiropractors have a big problem with, is we’re kind of stuck in our own way. So we have that one connection with a good attorney or good doctor that we work with, and we tend to stick with them really closely.
So, I know for me, networking is always one of the best and easiest ways to connect with new people. And I think for attorneys that are trying to go out there and make those new connections, is really showing how they can help the chiropractor with that personal injury case, whether it be making sure that their bills are protected or making sure that the client is being seen at the right times and being seen by the right doctors. That’s one of the biggest things I think that injury attorneys can do to make those connections and really just show their value on why they can help and how they can help make that chiropractor’s life easier.
Adding Value to the Chiropractor
Lindsey:
Absolutely. So, when an attorney has a client, rather than just trusting that the client is going to go to the chiropractor to make all of their doctor’s visits and staying on top of their own health, helping encourage that process. Clearly the more the patient, the client goes to their regular-appointed doctor, or chiropractors, it’s going to benefit everybody. It’s going to benefit the client, it’s going to benefit the attorney, and it’s going to benefit the chiropractor’s office. So it’s in everybody’s best interest to encourage that, and you can use those medical bills to really help optimize case values. So, how can lawyers do that to benefit everybody involved?
Branden:
Yeah, and I think one of the biggest things is making sure to have those conversations with the chiropractors, especially being, “Hey, what are you doing in your office to document these different things, whether it’s disc herniations or ligament damage or fractures, breaks, things like that. How are you documenting that?” So I can better go up against the insurance company and say, “Look, our client is very injured. They need this medical treatment and they’re going to possibly need future medical care.” I think that’s one of the biggest things to, going back to that first question, is just having those conversations and discussing what is done on both sides to make sure that the relationship is going to work well for both parties involved.
The medical bills, we try to make sure, at least in my case, we try to make sure that everything is documented as properly as possible so that way when we do turn over those records to the attorney, they have all the ammunition they need to show, “This client was injured, they have medical injuries now because of this accident, and they will most likely need future care.” So, I think having those conversations and being open-minded, I think, is going to be one of the biggest things to helping both parties, the attorney and the chiropractor get that value out of that relationship.
Working Together to Document Recovery
Lindsey:
And in 21st century, you would think that there would be technology involved to help make sure that the chiropractors and the attorneys and the clients are all on the same page in terms of that journey to recovery. What options are out there?
Branden:
So some of the biggest things are telehealth. I mean, with the advent of telehealth, it has opened the doors to so many different medical practices, and that’s one of the things that we are trying to expand with chiropractors in the area, because a lot of times those personal injury cases, the patient starts to feel better, and then that appointment with the chiropractor or a physical therapist or whoever they’re going to, falls by the wayside. Because in their head they’re doing well, “Why do I need to keep going to see…” And as we know, that’s very important to make sure that it’s documented that they have injury and they’re receiving continued care.
So, one of the things that we’re implementing currently with chiropractors, is using telehealth, because it takes way less time. The chiropractor can jump on a call with two or three times the number of patients they could see in person, and maybe we’re not doing all the hands-on stuff in a normal office visit, but it allows us to do outcome measures. It allows us to do range of motion. We can talk to them, see how they’re feeling, and do basically an exam over telehealth and see how they’re progressing with care. Maybe there’s a reason why they haven’t come in. Maybe there’s a transportation issue or maybe there’s something else to where we would never know that unless we’re following up, calling the patient every single day.
I think that telehealth is going to be widely used in the near future way more than it ever has been. But even to that point too, a lot of the meetings I do with attorneys are telehealth visits. Their time is valuable, my time is valuable, and it’s a lot easier to sit down on a call and discuss how we can work together. And the old school train of thought was, “Take them to lunch, talk about their likes, my likes, get to know them on a personal level,” which is great, and I think that’s very important. But if we can spend 15 minutes on a phone call or a virtual visit, we can still meet face-to-face. We can do that, “Hey, how are you doing? How am I doing? How’s the client doing?” Give all the updates we need and still be able to make progress with that case.
Lindsey:
That’s great. And telehealth and tele visits, using the technology that we have to help people navigate this really challenging piece of their life, because the injury has affected so much more than just their body, it’s impacted their ability to go to work, it’s impacted their ability to have childcare, it’s impacted all of the different time constraints that they have in their lives. So, being able to use that as a huge asset both for the chiropractors and for the lawyers and for the client to all work together, especially as they are presenting the client as taking their health seriously and their journey to recover seriously.
So, once the relationship has been established, the attorney has approached a chiropractor and said, “Hey, I’m going to take care of you. You’re going to take care of my client and we’re going to collaborate on this,” how can that attorney keep a positive relationship going with the chiropractor once they kind of make it onto their list of potential personal injury referrals?
Maintaining the Chiropractor Referral Relationship
Branden:
Yeah, and I think that’s a great question, because a lot of the bigger firms, at least in our area in Florida, they’re getting a hundred clients a day. So those small 1, 2, 3 attorney groups, the biggest thing, I think going back to some of the earlier stuff that was said, is making sure that our medical bill is used to fight the insurance company, and making sure that at the end of the day we get paid for the care that we provide. And for me, we do a lot of negotiations with our attorneys. We make sure that it’s fair for everybody, and there’s always times when cases settle for less than what we assume and everybody has to take a little bit of a hit, but that’s also part of personal injury and we know that, going into it.
So, I think the biggest thing is maintaining those relationships to the best of the ability, whether it’s making sure bills are covered. Another big one is understanding that sure, we do get some unattached cases where we can refer out, but it’s way less than what any attorney group is ever going to get on their end. So while we do try to make sure our local attorneys are taken care of, we may only get 1, 2, 3 unattached cases per month, and we’ll send those out to our attorneys. But we also know that the attorney groups are going to get 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 per attorney group per month, and it’s hard for us to keep up with sending those referrals back as well.
Lindsey:
That makes sense, where it’s not always going to be an equal give and take, and the best way to kind of keep on the top of somebody’s mind is treating the chiropractor with the respect and professional respect and demeanor that they deserve, making sure that their bills get paid and that their service isn’t going by the wayside.
Legal and Ethical Hurdles to Building Referral Relationships
In some of the cases that we’ve talked to lawyers about the challenges that they’ve had connecting with chiropractors, some of them tend to shy away, even from building a professional relationship with chiropractors and thinking about some of the ethical hurdles that they have to jump through. So what are some of those ethical conundrums that you need to be cautious about when working with personal injury attorneys and when maintaining these relationships?
Branden:
Yeah, I think the biggest one, and I don’t think a lot of people like to talk about it, because it involves money and nobody likes to talk about money. We are all, obviously, we’re business. We’re a business, we need to make money. So, I think that’s one of the biggest things to really be cautious of. Because yes, we all know in the back of our head that it’s a personal injury case, it’s going to pay better than a lot of your major medical, it’s going to pay a lot better than a lot of your cash. But making sure that the attorney clients understand, “Look, there is money involved here,” but in order for those things to be had, the chiropractor or physical therapist or whoever you’re working with has to make sure they’re treating you appropriately. I think that’s the biggest thing a lot of… There’s a lot bad actors in every field, and those are the biggest things I think you have to worry about, is making sure that if you are working with a chiropractor or physical therapist or medical doctor, that they’re doing things above board. They’re making sure that everything is taken care of on their end, so that way the client or patient is feeling better, and at the end of the day, you know that hard work will pay off.
Lindsey:
That’s absolutely right. At the end of the day, it is all about the client and making sure that they are getting better. The personal injury attorney is working to make sure that the client’s medical bills are paid. You guys are providing a great service, and you guys are all working together as a team to get somebody who was injured because of somebody else’s negligence, back on track with their own lives.
Well, thank you so much for sharing that information with us, Branden. If any of our listeners have questions, because you are clearly an expert in the telehealth field as well as in the chiropractor field, what can they do to get in touch and ask more?
Branden:
Yeah, best way to get a hold of me is my email address. It’s just first and last name, BrandenRace@gmail.com. Currently working on a few programs to help chiropractors and even attorneys really narrow down how to use personal injury and how to use it ethically and properly. So hopefully over the next couple of weeks we’ll be getting that rolling and hopefully be able to help a lot more attorneys and chiropractors dive down this telehealth route.
Lindsey:
That’s great. Well, we will be excited to share the information and the processes and the help that you have to give to our personal injury attorney listeners. Thank you so much, Branden. Have a great day.
Branden:
Thank you, Lindsey. I appreciate it.
