Chiropractic Billing Expert Interview – Dr Brian Capra – Part I

Dr. Brian Capra, a graduate of Life University, has been a practicing chiropractor and office automation expert. He routinely visits chiropractic offices around the nation while receiving raving feedback from his clients. In his blog on Chiropractic Office Billing Software Profitability, Dr. Brian offers practical solutions for building a profitable and completely paperless office. The following two-part interview with Dr. Brian provides a behind-the-scenes look at his work.

• When did you become interested in chiropractic? Dr. Brian : I became interested in Chiropractic just before graduating with a bachelors in biology. I have always enjoyed studying complex systems. I loved learning about how life is formed and how amazingly efficient is the human body. Most business systems are crude approximations of the amazingly efficient systems in the human body. Chiropractic maximizes that innate intelligence to do what it understands infinitely better than any human mind. To think that we can outsmart this intelligence with a pill, potion, or lotion is naive. Removing interference and maximizing the potential of life, relationship, or business is what has intrigued me most about Chiropractic.
• What attracted you to office automation? Dr. Brian: The human body uses automation to manage millions of processes every second. The autonomic nervous system is a good example. Imagine having to memory-manage every heart beat and breath throughout your day. That job alone would keep you so preoccupied you would forget to go get food and water for you survival. On the business side, the insurance companies continuously add things to manage to the practice. If these new things are memory-managed, the efficiency of the practice suffers. Ultimately, patient care, practice capacity, and profitability shrink. I’m concerned about where chiropractic profession is going in terms of profitability. I feel like most practice owners are indifferent and apathetic, while the ship is being steered by people who do not have our best interests at heart — out-of-control payers and incompetent billers, to name two. We are at an absolutely crucial and unprecedented point in our history where technology enables the insurance companies to underpay us, profile us, audit, and take back the little money was paid … But many billing companies do not have the processes, the technology infrastructure, or the talent required to face the challenges posed daily by the insurance companies. And the practice suffers substandard reimbursement, overworked practitioners, burnout. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a doctor say “how can I keep up with notes, billing, etc.” The answer is simple: use your chiropractic training, use the principles that keep your own body functioning.
• Question: Why did you decide to start Billing Precision? Dr. Brian : The simple reason: I needed a billing solution for my own practice, I experienced second rate service first hand for too long, and I knew of no solution that would be good enough for rapid development of my practice and that I could trust to change as the insurance industry changed. I knew that lots of people feel the same way but I could not wait anymore for somebody else to do it for me. When I graduated, I went to learn from some of the most influential doctors, including Dr. Lerner, Dr. Loman, and Dr. Nalda. In addition to outstanding clinical training I also learned from them how to approach building and managing my own practice. I learned the importance of discipline and the potential of adequate infrastructure. I also saw how frustrated they were with the lack of integrated solutions: everything about running the office seemed to require memory-management, from scheduling the patient, to tracking care plan compliance, to managing outstanding balance. I feel that most practice management solutions are built backwards or incomplete (see my 4-part blog Is your Chiropractic Practice Management System Built Backwards???). They just keep reinventing the wheel. Another Scheduler, Custom notes, Automated check in. My feeling on this is SO WHAT??? Is the system checking you for compliance? Is it making sure everyone is billed? Are your notes really going to protect you against an audit? A good system must also manage patient education and community outreach. Part of our mission is to bring an industrial strength billing service and a practice management system, including a patient relationship management system, and help build the overall patient capacity of the practice.