Wellness vs. Maintenance

Is there a difference between wellness and maintenance care in today’s chiropractic practice?

As a chiropractic coach, I speak to chiropractors around the world day in and day out about their practice and life challenges, wins and how to create the life of their dreams.  And I get a good idea of the head space of what is going on in our chiropractic profession. This is a discussion that arises frequently and feel the distinction between Wellness Care vs. Maintenance Care is an important one to clarify.  From the standpoint of practice management, as well as from a person’s experience with care.

We have a Wellness Revolution that has fallen onto our laps.  The public truly wants what chiropractic can deliver, they just don’t know we do that.  They instead view us as pain relievers and back pain specialists, because that’s what we’ve educated them on in the past 90 years.

And the truth is, our chiropractic profession is still stuck in the antiquated 3:2:1 communication model of, “We’ll get you out of pain: then do corrective care: then onto maintenance”.  The only difference is now, we substitute the word “wellness” for “maintenance”.

So are they the same thing?  I think not!  From a definition perspective, maintaining something at the same level is much different than increasingly enhancing and moving towards new levels of health and wellness.  From a care frequency perspective, you might be able to “maintain” someone’s level of symptoms at a once a month frequency but you certainly won’t be helping them move forward towards greater levels of health and well-being.

Wellness care would have to be much more frequent to evolve someone’s nerve system and optimal health, depending on their lifestyle of course.  And from a person’s perception: if we are providing maintenance care at a maintenance frequency, is it possible that they have settled for their lower level of symptoms as ‘normal’? That they finally feel that chiropractic “didn’t work” because they still have x,y,z?  Or that they feel chiropractic care is only for symptom-relief care?

The big question is, how often do you and your family get checked? Isn’t it time that we told the people we care for the truth and offered them the chance to live the lifestyle and levels of health and wellness that our families do?  What’s the worst thing that can happen if they come in more often to get checked? That’s right, they don’t need to be adjusted!  We need to celebrate and educate them that this is EXACTLY what we hope for - to be functioning at 100% for that period of time.

I challenge you to look at what you are recommending for ongoing care.  Is it congruent with your understanding of chiropractic, our vitalistic philosophy and the goals of what you are trying to accomplish with people?  If you are still focused on pain relief, it might be time to recognize that people want TRUE wellness, not just an expensive aspirin.  A profession will step up to lead the wellness revolution, the question is, “Will it be chiropractors”?

If you want support and coaching, how-to’s on communicating this message, please contact us and see how we can help. Our mission is to have chiropractors be the leaders of TRUE health care and the wellness revolution!

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Tags: Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Practice Success, maintenance care, Rosen Chiropractic Coaching, Wellness Care, wellness chiropractic practice management, wellness revolution