Frequently Asked Questions

Why is practically every patient who enters your practice a potential Orthotic Patient?
How do you make orthotics a Cash and Carry item in your practice?
What are the benefits of doing large numbers of orthotics each month?
Is it possible to predict orthotic results before you even consider the modality?
How do you know exactly what to do on an orthotic follow up visit?
How do you get patients to write success stories and testimonials?
Why is it a must that you follow up with your orthotic patients?
What is the only thing we are trying to accomplish with orthotics?
How do you know if the orthotic that you are using is the best orthotic?
Why do practitioners “cherry pick” their orthotic patients?
Why don’t most practitioners do large volumes of orthotics?
How does a Single Weekend Course give you everything you need to know to be ultimately successful with biomechanics and orthotics?

Why is practically every patient who enters your practice a potential Orthotic Patient?

If we all generally agree that well over ninety to ninety-five percent of the patients who walk through our doors exhibit some degree of faulty mechanics, then why are we not putting a majority of these patients into orthotics each month?  For specific information on this please see our Sales and Statistics page.

The reasons I have heard over the years to answer that question are many, but it usually boils down to results – lack thereof.   Furthermore there is the issue of relative inconsistency with respect to the overall efficacy that practitioners sometimes experience with orthotics that can often prove to be more problematic for you - the practitioner, than it is worth.  This is to say that when you have to see an orthotic patient seven times and they are still not happy, you have most definitely lost money treating that patient when you compare your time to what you were ultimately compensated.

The obvious solution to this is to get great consistent results and a big part of achieving that is to be able to predict how your patients will do with orthotics before you even offer orthotics as a treatment modality.  For more information on this please see our Ability to Predict Orthotic Outcomes page and Confidence page.

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How do you make orthotics a Cash and Carry item in your practice?

There is an old saying about the three things you need to know in order to become successful with a new business – Location, Location, Location!  Our version of this when it applies to making your orthotics a cash and carry item is – Results, Results, Results! 

This is not just something cute for us to say, this is how we do it in our own practice – Florida BioMechanics Group.  This is also how we get success stories and testimonials from our patients on a consistent basis.  The point here is that if you perceive that you have trouble getting cash from your patients to cover orthotics, you need to quickly take a look at two things:  The first being the way that you are doing orthotics, and the second being the orthotic that you are using.

In our advanced course we present to you a true biomechanical model that address how you do biomechanics and orthotics, which covers literally everything from your initial paper work to exactly what you do on follow up appointments.  Please see our A Standardized Model page for more information.  By learning to do our static and dynamic exams, you will be able to easily and immediately judge the efficacy of the orthotics you use as this is one of the many purposes of being able to assess your patient’s mechanics.  For more information on our static and dynamic exams, please see our Ability to Predict Orthotic Outcomes Page. 

The bottom line is that if you can produce the results – great consistent results – your patients will gladly pay out of pocket for your orthotics.  We teach you how to achieve consistent great results in our advanced course

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What are the benefits of doing large numbers of orthotics each month?

Factually speaking, when you are doing a large volume of orthotics, assuming you are getting consistently stellar results, you automatically create a buzz within your practice that is contagious in the form of second and third orthotic pair requests and direct patient referrals as your patients want their friends and family to experience the benefits that they received from you.  Additionally, when you look at the financial benefits your practice enjoys by doing double, triple or even quadruple the numbers of orthotics you are currently doing, those numbers add up real quick.  For further information on this topic, check out our Sales and Statistics Page

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Is it possible to predict orthotic results before you even consider the modality?

Absolutely – in fact it is quite easy to do. 

The biggest problem that most practitioners have with respect to doing orthotics is that they do “orthotics by diagnosis” as opposed to doing “orthotics by mechanics”.  This is to say that five different people with heel pain may have five different sets of faulty mechanics.  So, biomechanically speaking, if you solely use a diagnosis to decide on whether or not to make a pair of orthotics, you really are leaving much to chance.  Please see our Orthotics by Diagnosis page for more information on this topic.  

Conversely, if you have an exam or system that was designed to quickly and accurately access your patient’s mechanics, then you could start to see trends based on your patient’s symmetry and available range of motion or gross flexibility.  In fact that is what we did and as a result we came up with a classification system based on the patient’s mechanics.  This classification system allows us to predict how someone will do with the orthotics before we even consider offering them orthotics as an option.  It is just as important to know who not to offer orthotics to as it is who to offer them to.  Please see our Ability to Predict Orthotic Outcomes page for more information.

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How do you know exactly what to do on an orthotic follow up visit?

The short answer is that by knowing how to assess your patient’s mechanics, you simply spot how their mechanics have changed with the orthotics as compared to before they received the orthotics and when they initially began to wear them on the dispense visit.  But naturally, to do this you need to be able to quickly and accurately assess your patient’s mechanics.

In short, despite how well (or not) the patient is doing, you can make a “spot on” and totally effective adjustment by being able to spot the primary imbalance during the static and dynamic exams.  These exams literally take about eight minutes to perform start to finish and the problem area, if one exists is very easily seen. Please see our Ability to Predict Orthotic Outcomes page for more information. Once you have the problem in plain sight, the appropriate adjustment becomes obvious.  Most often we ultimately make “fine tuning or tweaking” adjustments that take the patient from a perceived “good” result to a perceived “great” result. 

What we are basically doing with our orthotic patients is restoring balance and symmetry to how the body functions or more specifically, to the body’s mechanics.  To the degree that you are able to do this, your results will be consistently great and you will exceed your patient’s expectations more often than not.  The point here is that when you can quickly and accurately assess your patient’s mechanics you always know exactly what to do to the orthotics to affect a change for the better.  It is only when you cannot do this that orthotic adjustment and follow up becomes a bit of a guessing game, complete with varied and inconsistent results. 

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How do you get patients to write success stories and testimonials?

The short answer is simply to attain great results but the real answer is you must literally “exceed their expectations” with respect to what they perceived they would or even could accomplish with your orthotics. 

How to do this is relatively simple.  It starts with the ability to predict your orthotic results with any given patient by being able to assess their mechanics.  Please see our Ability to Predict Orthotic Outcomes page for more information. Then once you have the appropriate information to hand, you can give your patients a very good assessment of their situation and how quickly or not you can resolve or positively affect their chief complaint. 

How we do this is by documentation via our specifically tailored initial patient paperwork where we ask questions to purposively extract any and all information about the patient’s biomechanical condition.  As a part of our paperwork we also ask what their short term and long term goals are.  Most patients are never asked this and when prompted they will most definitely tell you.  At this point, since we can predict with great accuracy how they will respond with the orthotics, we generally raise the bar to increase their expectations as again, because we can predict we know what we can accomplish.

The main and very important point is that when you ultimately meet and then exceed your patient’s expectations, they not only write you a success story or testimonial, they generally get multiple pairs of orthotics.  Additionally they also become your best and most reliable form of advertizing – enthusiastic word and mouth. This of course leads to patient referrals and when done in volume, the benefits to both your patients and your practice become immediately evident.  Please see our Sales and Statistics page for more information. 

We can teach you how to do this and more in our Single Weekend Advanced Course

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Why is it a must that you follow up with your orthotic patients?

Our answer to this question is that this is where you really get and ensure your great results and all the benefits of doing orthotics.  

In our practice we look forward to our orthotic follow up visits as this visit primarily includes seeing how the patient has improved from the previous visit.  Additionally, on each follow up visit we review with the patient the initial paperwork they filled out to demonstrate how far they have come with respect to their various chief complaint(s) and their short and long term goals.  Once it is apparent that you have in fact met or exceeded their initial goals, this is generally when they write a success story or a testimonial as most of our patients are simply blown away with their results.  Additionally this is when we “sell” the majority of our second or third pairs of orthotics as after they truly experience the significant benefits of the orthotics, they want a pair for each of their shoes so that they never have to go without the support and correction that they have become so accustomed to by this point in time.  Furthermore, we offer a discount for second or more pairs that a good percentage of our patients gladly take advantage of for the reasons just stated.

The next point is that this is where we literally create a good percentage of our patients “out standing results.”  This is to say that, by a simple “adjustment” you can take someone with a perceived good result and change that into a perceived outstanding result.  Being able to do this by being able to recognize and assess your patients mechanics, can in many instances mean the difference between a success story or not and the difference between a second pair order or not. 

Orthotics are not a pill – they are a process.  And where you can definitely get really good results by just dispensing the orthotics and doing minimal to no significant follow up, the way to ensure you get great consistent results is to follow up and make sure that your patients are doing as well as they possibly can.  Again, sometimes a minor tweak can make a big difference to your patient’s well being and overall perceived result and that can make the difference between your practice doing a large volume of orthotics each month or just a few here and there.   

We have designed our Single Weekend Advanced Course to give you all the hands on assessment skills you need to be fully confident and able to handle and improve any condition on a post dispense visit until the patient is doing as well as they can and they are completely happy with you and the service you provided them.   For additional information please see our Advanced Course

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What is the only thing we are trying to accomplish with orthotics?

The short answer is symmetry and balance or stability. 

We learned a long time ago that trying to make most people completely symmetrical was not only impossible, but many people cannot tolerate being completely symmetrical because of the rather severe fixed compensations that they have developed over many decades of time. 

This is to say that the ultimate goal of orthotic treatment is to get the person into the best possible alignment with respect to symmetry and balance or stability that can be  tolerated and that can be maintained.  Fortunately for us, we can get most people pretty close in terms of symmetry and stability.   Ultimately the more involved the patient is as determined by our classification system, Ability to Predict Orthotic Outcomes, the longer it usually takes to afford a dramatic and lasting change to their mechanics. 

“Patients fight or challenge the orthotics with the power of their instability” was something my partner Bob Levine said to me one day.  This sort of paints the picture with what you are up against with people who have severe compensations and why it takes more involved patients more time to acquire strength and stamina in the better, but also new and different position you ultimately place them into.  Again, these are easily seen if you can assess your patient’s mechanics and once seen, they can be addressed and furthermore - they become very predictable. 

We can teach you how to do this and more in our Single Weekend Advanced Course.  Please check out our Advanced Course for more information.   

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How do you know if the orthotic that you are using is the best orthotic?

The question to ask first is does your orthotics consistently address your patient’s faulty mechanics?  At least that is how we gauge the efficacy of our orthotics. 

The problem with that answer is that it necessitates a full understanding of how to assess your patient’s mechanics.  And in order for that to happen “practically” you must be able to do this quickly and accurately.  Additionally, you must be able to quickly and accurately document these faulty mechanics to refer back to each time you see your patient.  Please see our Ability to Predict Orthotic Outcomes page for more information. 

Assuming that you can do this, (which is one of the primary things you learn during our course), you can very easily see if your orthotics are doing the job or not.  Either your orthotics address the excessive pronation or they do not.  Either your orthotics address you patients pelvis / hips or they do not.  If they do not, then you are by definition not using the best orthotic and should take a look at using another lab or orthotic technology.  For a quick display of orthotic technology and efficacy please see our Orthotic Technology page.    

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Why do practitioners “cherry pick” their orthotic patients?

I will answer that with two sentiments – frustration and once bitten, twice shy.  There is a simple formula here that goes something like – to the degree that a practitioner cherry picks their orthotic patients, to that degree they have had problems and frustrations with orthotics in the past. 

“Cherry picking” or very selectively choosing your orthotic patients results in nothing more than you doing less and less orthotics because when you don’t have a predictable orthotic technology or model, even the “select” patients do not ultimately respond to orthotics with great consistency.  And when that happens, people tend to cherry pick even more selectively until some practitioners give up all together for too much inconsistency leads to decreased confidence, and when your confidence goes so does any chance of you doing large volumes of orthotics each month.  

Orthotics are a process, they are not a pill.  The process however does not need to be bulky or cumbersome, but it does require some basic skills and a plan.  When you have these basic skills and you have a plan, you get consistency and with consistency you gain back your confidence. 

We can teach you how to attain this and more in our Single Weekend Advanced Course.  Please check out our Advanced Course for more information.   

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Why don’t most practitioners do large volumes of orthotics?

There are many, many reasons for this unfortunate situation.  Many practitioners believe that orthotics are at times more trouble than they are worth with respect to practitioner time, reimbursement and overall patient satisfaction.  And where this may be a reality for many practitioners, the true reason why this situation exists at all lies in the realm of inconsistency and an overall lack of results.

Besides inconsistency and varied results, other reasons include concentrating too heavily on a specific diagnosis as surveys have shown us that most practitioners use literally less than three “orthotic indication diagnoses” to either offer orthotics or not.  In the section of this site, “Orthotics by Diagnosis”, there are two formulas laid out – one that concentrates on diagnosis and one that relies on assessing your patient’s mechanics.  The first formula leads to severely limiting your potential orthotic indications where the other opens them up to literally dozens.

The bottom line is that the vast majority of the patients who walk through your door exhibit some degree of faulty mechanics.  Ultimately we do not place a majority of these patients into orthotics because we lack a standardized technology and we cannot quickly and accurately assess our patient’s mechanics – for the ability to do so allows you to predict orthotic results before you even offer them as a treatment modality. 

If you were getting consistently great results with your orthotic patients without the traditional head aches associated with orthotics, your patients would gladly pay out of pocket for your orthotics and you would place more and more patients into orthotics each month.  This, among other things is what we teach you to do in our single weekend advanced course.

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How does a Single Weekend Course give you everything you need to know to be ultimately successful with biomechanics and orthotics?

In short, we give you all the tools you need to be Confident and Effective with respect to applying Biomechanics and providing Orthotics to your patients. 

Confidence comes with consistency.  More to the point, confidence comes with consistently great results.  In the section, we teach you to do just that – to predict how your patients will do with orthotics before you even offer them as a treatment modality.  In this section you also learn how to do our static and dynamic biomechanical evaluation exams.  To perform both of these exams, (which takes literally less than eight minutes to do start to finish), you give yourself all the answers to the problems presented in the patient’s chief complaint. And with this information you can now determine with confidence if orthotics will address these chief complaints as the chief complaints are nothing but symptoms generated by faulty mechanics.  This last point is illustrated in the “Orthotics by Diagnosis” section of this site. 

The main point here is that once you have mastered being able to quickly and accurately spot your patients faulty mechanics, everything else literally falls into place as from there you can predict how your patient will do with orthotics and then you either offer them the modality or you do not.  If you don’t, it is because you have the confidence to know that this will be the patient you would see a dozen times who would still not be happy because you understand the mechanics involved in the equation.  And if you do offer the patient orthotics it is because you have the confidence to know that you will get a great result and that if you hit any bumps along the way that you can easily and accurately address them with no guess work involved as again, you understand the mechanics in the equation. 

Confidence leads to doing large volumes of orthotics and great orthotics results leads to second pairs, direct patient referrals, patient success stories and testimonials and subsequently a large consistent revenue stream for your practice month in and month out.  Please see our Advanced Course page and register today so that you can add or significantly augment this aspect of our professions scope into your existing practice today.       

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