Most chiropractors love getting a new auto injury case, because, simply put, they’re quite lucrative. When it comes to the business end of a practice, there’s very few patients out there that have a case value average that’s higher than a typical auto case.
Most states have a $5000 of personal injury protection coverage minimum, and although the average auto case is seen about 32 times by a chiropractor, for an approximate average case value of $3500-$4500, that’s still a lot higher than a typical private insurance or cash patient case value average (which is around $500-$1500, depending).
The negative aspect of marketing to auto crash patients, of course, is that historically, that has required working closely with PI attorneys, who aren’t always… shall we say… the best people in the world to work with. To say that a lot of those relationships get a little icky is an understatement. We’ll get to that in a minute.
First, let’s get a realistic idea of just how large the auto injury market is in your office area.
THE CALCULATION
All right, so let’s do the math. First off, how big is your catchment area; meaning, what is the population within the geographic reach of your clinic? Be realistic on this. Some docs want to think that people will be willing to travel great distances and brave terrible dangers just for the honor of being adjusted in their clinic. The truth… not so much. People value convenience. So take a good look at where you are and what your overall population draw is.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention. Make sure that it’s the ADULT (over 18) population. We’re dealing with drivers, here; yes, minors do get injured sometimes as passengers in collisions, but the vast majority of people you’ll be seeing as MVA patients will be adults, so again, let’s keep it realistic.
Let’s say it’s 5,000 people. All right, so national statistics tell us that the average driver gets into some sort of an accident every five years. That means that in a given year, you have about a 20% chance of getting in some sort of MVA. So we apply that to our potential population, in this example, 5,000, and we end up with about 1,000 people each year get into some sort of accident.
Not all accidents end up in injury. In fact, it’s about 50%. Approximately half of that number of people who were in an MVA will actually end up injured, so for our example, we cut 1,000 down to 500. That’s the number of people each year in your practice area that get injured in a car crash yearly.
I like to break that down further to monthly, which you get, of course, just by dividing by 12, so for our example, that’s about 40 people a month injured in car crashes.
A BIGGER MARKET THAN YOU THINK
Surprised? I know I was the first time I did the math. Simply put, there is a vast pool of potential auto crash patients out there, who strongly need a good chiropractor to help them with their injuries.
Now obviously, you can’t expect to get ALL of those people into your office. Some will just be stubborn and not seek treatment no matter what, some won’t know that they can (or should) get care, and some will go to competitors.
But there’s a lot of room to work with inside of those numbers. A good marketing plan can pull in a significant number of those 40 patients a month.
I mentioned that traditionally, chiropractors have promoted themselves to the auto market through PI attorneys. I won’t go into all the ways in which this is undesirable; if you’ve tried it or are doing it now, you know what I’m talking about.
There are other ways to identify and promote yourself to this population, however. I personally like an online marketing system that draws in potential patients from the internet, engages them in an active way to create interest in me as being their expert, and then uses an automated follow up system to ensure they pull the trigger and come in (I like using automated follow ups; I hate calling people).
If you’re interested in learning how I do it, click here to learn more (it’s free). But don’t ignore this gold mine of a patient base! With the way managed care and private insurance is going, we need all of the lucrative patients we can get!
