In 2020, when the pandemic hit the world, people started taking subscriptions to almost everything. It started in 2020, but it seems, it will continue in the future. Today, when customers shop online, they use their Amazon Prime membership. When they want entertainment, they watch movies on Netflix. When they want to eat, they get a meal kit delivered by Blue Apron. Now, healthcare practices, including chiropractic providers, are getting in on the act by offering membership subscriptions for their services. Many chiropractic practices are still thinking their way around the specifics of what can make a successful membership program. However, many early adopters of chiropractic membership plans have now become successful practices with repeat business, higher patient volume, and a constant stream of income. Before we head into the benefits of offering chiropractic membership programs to your patients, let’s find out why your practice needs to offer a membership model.
Why Chiropractic Practices Should Start Offering Membership Plans?
The traditional model of chiropractic service delivery is pay-per-visit. Patients come into practice, receive services, provide the practice with their insurance information, and pay their co-pay. This is seen in almost every private practice, regardless of what the patient’s insurance status might be. However, in recent years, many consumers have grown frustrated with the rising costs of their health insurance responsibilities, and many doctors of chiropractic have felt stymied by the insurance system that expects them to maintain proper documentation while providing quality care and spend more time with patients. But you can change the game. Your clinic can see more patients, spend more quality time with them, and earn more. How? By offering chiropractic memberships to patients!
Your practice can provide chiropractic membership programs to patients such as:
• Insured patients with high deductible health insurance plans: Patients, who are insured but have high deductibles, will benefit the most by taking up your membership subscription. Just think about this. Why would they use their insurance plan to visit a chiropractor and pay $20 as a co-pay for each visit when they can have 4 visits per month for just $55 as a member. Your patients will be more than happy to pay $90 per month to receive a chiropractic examination, 4 chiropractic adjustments, and coverage for one additional family member than paying $20 or more co-pay for each visit.
• Patients with insurance plans that don’t cover chiropractic services: If your patients have insurance plans that would not pay for their chiropractic visits, you can ask them to take up chiropractic memberships package.
• People with no insurance or cash-only patients: You can help your patients receive quality chiropractic care without the need for insurance. Offer monthly chiropractic plans, yearly subscriptions, or even customized membership models to your cash patients or uninsured patients so they can receive all chiropractic adjustments and therapies every visit for a lower price than they would have paid as a co-pay if they had insurance. Now, also check out three important reasons from patients’ perspectives why you should offer memberships: First of all, it allows patients to know their chiropractic care costs for a given period, it may be a month, 3-month, or a year. Depending on their preferences, they can access chiropractic services at affordable rates by paying recurring fees every month, every quarter, or every year. Next, it helps to drive better patient outcomes. When patients receive certain benefits and services for that membership fee, they are more likely to utilize your services and will continue their treatment regimen. Finally, it helps patients, who have high healthcare utilization, with cost benefits.
If You’re Not Offering Membership to Patients, Here’s What You’re Missing
1. Memberships Mean Repeat Business
Let’s get into why membership programs work so well for chiropractic practices. Your existing customers are your most valuable resource. You can encourage repeat business and create long-lasting profitable relationships by providing membership benefits. Remember that repeat customers refer 50% more people than new customers. And, they even spend 3X more than new customers.
2. Memberships Mean Recurring Revenue
Offering yearly or monthly chiropractic plans to patients would mean you can bring guaranteed recurring income every month. As a provider, you can focus on care delivery, instead of worrying about your revenue. You can give patients more quality time and establish patient loyalty which will be better for your business in the long term.
3. Memberships Entice New Patients
Memberships aren’t only for existing patients. Studies show that 69% of consumers are influenced by just the presence of a membership program when they compare providers.
4. Memberships Can Lead to More Positive Reviews
A happy customer in a membership program will have a positive effect on your online reputation. They will post their positive experiences online in exchange for their membership benefits. These reviews will add up, enticing new patients to check it out. New patients are more likely to book an appointment after seeing that your practice offers memberships and you have so many happy customers.
Types of Chiropractic Membership Models
Offering membership plans makes sense because now your chiropractic clinic will not be forced to submit claims to get paid by an insurance payer. Your patients pay that set membership fee upfront or month-to-month basis. There’s no more arguing over what your percentage of the fee should be, or having to chase down either the insurance company or the patient to get your part of the payment. Without back-and-forth dealings with insurance companies or claims submissions, you will be free to spend more energy and time taking care of your patients.
Here are some examples of the chiropractic membership models and pricing that chiropractic clinics can try implementing in their practice:
- Single-Visit Plan
Single-visit plans are perfect for patients who come to your clinic only a few times per year. They can receive your chiropractic receive services for just $39 per visit.
- Unlimited Monthly Visit Plan
One of the most popular chiropractic membership plans is the Unlimited Monthly Visit as patients get to enjoy unlimited monthly visits for a cost that may be nearly as much as a single visit if they don’t take up membership. For example, your chiropractic clinic can charge $69 per month and provide unlimited monthly visits.
- Tiered Membership Plans
Your patients can select a level of care that best meets their needs and pay an annual or monthly membership fee that covers services such as a certain number of visits, additional access via phone or email, discounts on products you sell, or whatever else you wish to include in your menu of offerings. Let’s take a look at some of the tiered membership models chiropractic clinics are offering:
• One session every two months — $25
• One session every month — $50
• Two sessions every two months — $100
OR
• 5 Visit Adjustment Package — $325 ($65 each)
• 10 Visit Adjustment Package — $500 ($50 each)
• 20 Visit Adjustment Package — $800 ($40 each)
4. Unlimited Care Plan
You can provide Unlimited Care Plans to patients who need regular treatment for an injury or chronic issue. Some examples of Unlimited Chiropractic Care Plans include:
- 1-month unlimited visits — $300 per month
- 3 months unlimited visits — $200 per month
- 6 months unlimited visits — $150 per month
- 12 months unlimited visits — $125 per month
5. One Annual Plan
Patients who need long-term treatment would like to opt for an annual membership. For instance, patients get the equivalent of two months free and enjoy unlimited visits for a whole year with an annual plan that costs just $699/year.
6. Family Membership Plans
If 2 or more patients of the same household are under your care, they can take advantage of a Family Membership Plan. The purpose of offering a Family Membership Plan is to allow your patient and their families to receive affordable, convenient, and quality care.
• If your patient demographic has more families with young children, you can offer something like this – Add a child membership for those under 18 years to an adult membership plan. They will receive unlimited monthly visits for just $29 per child.
• Offer a chiropractic monthly membership plan to a family of 2 adults and kids under 18 years and charge the family a monthly fee of $199 with a 12-month commitment.
• If a family with up to 2 adults and kids under 18 can is paying a one-time annual payment of $1990/yr upfront, you can charge them for 10 months and provide 2 months free.
How to Manage Membership Model Successfully
With zHealth chiropractic software, managing membership plans becomes easy. How? zHealth offers a well-rounded set of Membership Management features for chiropractors. You can design your own membership plans. Your patients can have ’n’ a number of active membership packages. You can accept multiple payment options and automate renewals. Membership data flows to invoices automatically so you don’t have to keep a track of the visit counts available in a membership plan.
Some other features of the Membership Management tool in zHealth include:
- Create any number of membership packages.
- A patient can have multiple active memberships.
- Offer flexible payment options.
- Print membership payment details and share it with patients as PDF.
- Generate membership reports with one click.
An added bonus? You can manage your entire practice, and not just chiropractic yearly or monthly membership programs, in one platform. zHealth offers all-in-one chiropractic practice management software for managing scheduling, documentation, billing, online reputation, patient reactivation, 2-way text messaging, and more.
The road ahead…
It’s time for chiropractic clinics and wellness providers to take the plunge and make membership subscriptions the default model for their business rather than an exception. If you think your patient base could be more engaged with your practice, a membership program might prove beneficial to both your practice and your patients. The next step is to get the infrastructure to handle it. And that is – chiropractic software with an integrated membership management tool.
Want to learn more about the benefits of offering chiropractic membership plans and how zHealth makes this whole process easy?
