Have you noticed what's happening in chiropractic today? Everyone's jumping on the family practice bandwagon, wanting to build practices that will not only support their families but serve the families in their communities as well.

Observe carefully, and you'll see that D.C.s who'd never had a family practice and political organizations, chiropractic colleges and consultants that had never even considered family practice before are now giving it a serious look.

More people than ever before are seeking my counsel and that of our team to help them better meet and serve the public's demand for holistic family health care. Many of the challenges D.C.s face when making the transition from a pain-based or cash and insurance-only practices (PI Rehab models) to family practices really need not occur. In fact, if the proper systems and strategies are implemented in advance, the transition can and should be seamless.

Examine your current systems to see if families are just an afterthought for you and your staff. Most chiropractors don't realize that one of the reasons they may be having trouble attracting families is because they aren't really family-oriented but "family after thought-oriented." Families should always be in the forefront of your thoughts, systems and operations if you want to build a successful family practice.

In order to position yourself properly you need to make sure that the communications system you implement speaks to family health issues.

Talk about families in your marketing and target them in your referral systems. Instead of just displaying a child-oriented or individual "successes" story board in your reception area, hang one that has photos of families and information related to multiple generations of families being under care at the same time.

Review and evaluate your daily visit procedures to see whether they're designed for one person at a time or to serve families.

Can your adjustment area accommodate families? Regardless of the layout of your office (as long as you have good family systems and procedures in place), you will be able to double, triple and even quadruple your capacity with half the effort.

Instruct your front desk staff to schedule family appointments all at the same time and send them back to the adjusting area together. While you're adjusting one person, have one or two of the other family members in position (lying down) and ready to go on other tables, so that you can quickly and efficiently take care of the entire family all at once. Make sure the family is set up in your computer system under one account so that checking in or out is effortless for them.

Your financial policies should also support family care.

Once you've established efficient office procedures for families, it should take you the same amount of time to adjust a family of four as it does for you to adjust two people. If you find that you are not able to adjust multiple family members in this time frame, then do not proceed with implementing a family fee system.

Always implement internal family systems and efficiency issues before you adopt a family fee system. After you've become efficient in both your adjustment procedures and your financial structure, your practice income will skyrocket because your cost per visit will decline.

Use some of these strategies and systems to immediately plug into your practice and solve many of the problems that consultants, coaches and other organizations have found challenging in communicating family practice to you.

Now is the time in history for chiropractors to lead family health care. Consider becoming a part of this history-making movement. When you do, you'll not only meet your community's needs for holistic family health care doctors, but you'll truly serve your calling by reaching and touching as many lives as possible with chiropractic.