Why do I say the Spinal Ligament Injury Market is a RICH UNTAPPED market for the LEADERS of every profession? Simple, today by statistics the majority of providers are awful at treating this condition (Spinal Ligament Injuries)! What I mean by that, is that the current researched statistical outcomes of these patients are really bad! No one can deny that! If the patient’s outcomes are bad, what does that say for the professionals that treat them? Must be bad right?

This of course provides an unprecedented opportunity for the Leaders of the various professions (Chiropractic, Medical Regeneration, Medical Specialists, Physical Rehabilitation Specialists) to clean up in this market. Why or how you may ask? The why is because there has never been a higher market need for doctors who are focused on, and can deliver great treatment results. The how, of course is establishing your Unique Selling Proposition (what make you unique in the market) through consistent market messaging that is easy and really cheap to do today! Most doctors in this market are not even sure how to accurately diagnose spinal ligament conditions let alone how to get great results with them. But this does not have to be true for the leaders.

As the Director of Education Spinal Kinetics (www.thespinalkinetics.com) I put out a YouTube Video a number of years back called the “Whiplash Statistics Don’t Lie” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st5bwC411VU ), and in that video I listed 41 studies that show the dismal outcomes of the patients with this type of Spinal Trauma. Car collisions are not the only mechanism that delivers this type of spinal ligament injury, there can be work related mechanisms, sports related, slip and fall, violence related, war related etc. As a matter of fact, Spinal Ligament Injuries are the number one cause of Pain & Disability in the world today, as explained to the world by the 2010 Bone & Joint Decade Report called, “The Burden of Musculoskeletal Diseases in the US.”

“Whiplash” from car collisions of course gets a lot of play because it routinely causes these types of injuries, and it can be an incredibly lucrative source of income for the doctors that treat them. Herein lies the problem for the gifted providers, the LEADERS mentioned above, that get great results with these injuries and should be the doctors that are treating everyone in their local community. If this is you listen up!

In the past and even in some cases today, many very average Doctors teamed up with very average Personal Injury Attorneys that MARKETED LIKE MAD to bring these injury patients into the attorney’s office, and then these same patients were sent out to the clinics that were “on the team” so to speak. Most of the time these offices were Doctors of Chiropractic, and their known purpose was to treat these patients quickly and keep that treatment bills very low. Treatment was one size fits all (everyone got the same treatment). These as you may suspect in many cases, were and are not the clinics that were setting records for stellar patient results, far from it. In my experience these clinics were often under-diagnosing the patient’s condition as well and under-treating, which is why their patient outcomes were so bad! These clinics were more interested in caring for the referring attorney needs as opposed to the needs of the treating patients! They seemed to be more interested on how they could make more money for their referring attorneys, so that they would continue to refer! Patient benefits, and patient results were far down the list.

As a doctor, making plaintiff attorneys money is very easy to do, as it is accomplished by getting really bad results with your patients. The worse results that you as a doctor can get with your patients, the more benefits that they (the patients) are going to need in the future, and the larger the patient settlements are in general. Bad patient results in treatment will increase the settlement and make the referring attorney more money! Patients in these clinics are at excessively high risk to come out of their treatment experience with a chronic problem. The treatment was short and the cost was low, they quickly had their claim settled and now however they still have chronic low back pain from their injuries. What is their financial exposure?

The American Pain Society in their 2007 Low Back Pain Guidelines (1) state the following on page one: “Medical treatment for chronic low back pain is estimated to cost $9,000 to $19,000 per patient annually…” So if patients come out of their injury treatment with chronic lower back pain as an example, their personal financial risks could be substantial! This should be very clear to see.

What is even more unpalatable is that these so called “team clinics” that are controlled by their referrals sources (attorneys), have to ask their referral sources it they can do diagnostic procedures that will show the severity and location of their patient’s actual injuries. Many say no, so often these patients go with serious ligament injuries that are missed. Again in my experience these clinics were more interested in the attorneys need for low bills over the patients’ needs for complete and accurate diagnosis of their injuries and effective care! You see low treatment bills make it very easy and extremely profitable for the attorneys to “turn the settlement out”, regardless of the patient’s actual results in injury recovery.

These “Team Clinics” have also seriously contributed to the profession of Chiropractic’s public image problem. In a Gallop Poll, Americans polled had a very low opinion of Chiropractic’s Ethics and Honesty. (2) As a matter of fact the profession of Chiropractic was the lowest of all of the Primary Healthcare Providers tested.

All the above being said let’s find out what the true professional leaders in the fields can do to establish and take more market share in their local markets!

These are the doctors that should be treating these Spinal Ligament Injury Patients! These are the providers that excel at great patient results and they also know that these are not just “soft tissue” injuries! These are the doctors that are not owned by anyone! Their allegiance is geared toward anything that can improve the patient outcomes. They excel in the ability to accurately diagnose the patient condition as well as treat it. They are very good in Chiropractic, Medical Regeneration (PRP, Prolo, Stem Cells), Physical Rehabilitation, Pain Management or other Medical Specialties. These providers often have a network of referral providers in each of the above categories, as they are not too proud to know they may need help!

If this is you, you may have the question of what can I do to get above the noise in my local area? What can I do to publicly market to my community why they should be coming to our treatment facility for help, especially for Spinal Ligament Injuries?

This is done by knowing what makes you unique as well as very consistent messaging that is being posted everywhere about your clinic. With today’s social media outlets, it is very easy to get known in your communities. The key factor though is being first to the market in this new approach, in this patient results approach!

For Healthcare Providers that want to do more in this niche, I have set up an online Clinical Training & Marketing Portal. You can reach it at www.smartinjuryeducation.com In this portal I have a whole clinical course on spinal ligament injuries. This is what one provider said about it today in an email, “THANK YOU, the program is absolutely great, I cannot believe how much I am learning and who would have thought that after 28 years being a Chiropractor that I still have the time, energy and passion to keep learning and improving what we can do for our patients. THANK YOU THANK YOU” So we educate on the clinical side and then provide the marketing side!

Every month now we deliver new marketing materials (like the piece above) for you to flood your local market with—all done for you! We also have a monthly implementation call for you or your clinics marketer. This is a Webinar/Conference call where we explain what that months marketing message is and how to get it out! This service is comprehensive, very inexpensive and can be located at www.smartinjuryeducation.com

For more information on Spinal Ligament Injuries please check us out at www.smartinjurydoctor.com or check out our SmartInjuryDoctors® Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher.

For information on spinal ligament testing by board certified medical radiologists go to www.thespinalkinetics.com

Thank You

Dr. Cronk

1. http://americanpainsociety.org/uploads/education/guidelines/evaluation-management-lowback-pain.pdf
2. http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=52038