The role of the Chiropractic Assistant

The Chiropractic Assistant, or CA, is one of the most demanding and unique healthcare jobs around!  Heck, it’s one of the most unique jobs around PERIOD! What a WONDERFUL position! What other job allows you to be a witness to MIRACLES each day as you see each patient’s quality of life improve?!

The average chiropractic office typically has 1 or 2 employees who serve in this role and by definition; they are to assist the chiropractor in his or her daily responsibilities of running a chiropractic office. A Practical CA understands their responsibilies and takes them seriously. A Practical CA has an understanding that the best thing that any staff member can do, is to strive to ease the stress of the doctor by making sure that the office runs as smoothly as possible.

The typical CA job description may look a lot like the list below, with more or less,  depending upon how the practice is set up and how many staff members there are. These responsibilities are often divided up between 1-3 people:

• Greet Patients
• Handle Scheduling
• Front Desk Collections
• Manage Patient Flow
• Janitorial Duties
• Babysitter (doctor’s or patient’s children.)
• Marketer (often with very little marketing experience.)
• Cheerleader (keeping the doc happy, and the patients happy too!)
• Doctor/patient liaison
• Insurance coding and billing
• Collections
• IT Responsibilities
• Administrative Assistant for Doc.
• Therapy Application
• Patient Education
• HIPAA Compliance Officer
• Human Resources Manager
• Customer Service Rep.

Since most chiropractic offices are typically a one doctor office, with one or two staff members, the chiropractic assistant must truly be the “Jill-of-all-Trades.” She should be flexible, knowledgeable and able to learn quickly. There is no other position anywhere, like that of a chiropractic assistant.

While the chiropractic colleges of the United States may do a good job of turning out doctors who are ready to adjust spines, they often fall short in teaching the skills that the doctor will need to run a successful practice. To make matters worse, there are few consistent, reasonably priced resources to help train doctor and staff and keep up with the many changes in the rules and regulations of the profession. States vary on their policies and procedures, insurance companies vary on theirs. State associations can help, but they often vary in their accessibility. Doctors usually rely on other D.C. friends/associates to get information, or they take whatever *facts* the many seminars or PM groups teach (with little oversight.) Never knowing for sure if what is being taught could potentially cost them their license, or worse; land them in prison.

There are many different types of chiropractic practices. Some offices mirror the look and the feel of a medical office. But more often than not, D.C.s shun the “medical” look, and want their practices to have a less traditional medical feel. In foregoing the medical feel of a practice, they often forego understanding and compliance of laws and regulations that they must abide by. Because of this, they are putting themselves and their staff at risk for penalties, fines and even prison time! Couple this with sparse chiropractic assistant training and certification, the average chiropractic office often has many issues of non-compliance in areas such as:

• HIPAA Training and Implementation
• Fair Credit Act training for collections procedures
• Participating insurance plans compliance
• Medicare compliance
• Federal inducement bylaws

While many practices do recognize the importance of seeking out and utilizing CA training resources, most fall into a trap of choosing to not spend the time or money making sure that their staff is well-trained. Whatever their reasons for this: high turn-over, lack of available training resources, cash-flow problems or other, an under-trained staff will affect the patient’s experience in your office. It also will affect the practice’s bottom line. Quality training is an invaluable resource in the office. In addition to reducing the likelihood of experiencing a compliance issue, it will ease the stress of all involved, patients, staff and doctor. Most importantly, a well-run practice will help the doctor to be able to focus on the important tasks at hand; patient cultivation and care.

In subsequent posts, we will explore a variety of issues that the chiropractic office staff may experience. We will in effect, be your Virtual Chiropractic Assistant with a goal to ease the stress of both staff and doctor.

Practically Yours,

PracticalCA