When your patients “don’t want to pay”

My patient said they couldn't afford care, so I have been treating them at a discount... and now they're going on an OVERSEAS TRIP! What the...??

Sound familiar?

Or maybe yours sounds more like...

💸 People will say it's too much to come for a few treatments at the chiropractor but then they'll spend money on an expensive handbag. They clearly don't value their health.

💸 I treated him for free because he said money was tight and then he goes and cancels last minute! How ungrateful.

💸 I keep my fees so low but people still say they can't afford to come see me. People just don't want to pay these days.

Notice the judgements we make of people, of the economy or the "state of things" purely because someone has indicated that the reason they are not starting care or continuing care is because of finances.

But consider for a moment the way YOU talk about money and your behaviour around it. When you say you can't afford something, what do you really MEAN by that? When you say something is too expensive, what are you REALLY saying? When you say either of these things, it's usually not because you literally don't have the money or couldn't make a plan to get it. Usually what you mean is something like... I didn't budget for this, it's not easy to spend this money, I'm worried I won't get the outcome I want from it, I'm not sure this is for me, I don't value it at this price, I don't want this outcome or product badly enough to spend that amount, I'm not sure if it's justified/responsible to spend this amount on this etc.

Here's an example from my life:

Years ago, I had a dancing teacher that I was not gelling with. I loved Latin dancing and I was willing to invest money in doing regular 1:1 lessons even as a fairly broke student. But I was not enjoying my experience with this instructor - I didn't feel like I was progressing fast enough, I felt like he was always forgetting the steps, and personality-wise we just didn't really "click".

Guess what reason I gave him for not continuing dancing?

Yup. Finances.

Think about why that is for a moment. It wasn't because that was actually true - it may have objectively been a stretch for me to pay for it but I was totally willing to do that. It's not because I literally didn't have that money in my account or couldn't make a plan to get it, like by teaching a few more pilates classes.

No, I told him that because it was the easy thing to say.

But here's what happened: he believed me, and offered me a big discount on my classes.

Awkward.

So me at the time felt too guilty to say no to him being willing to solve the exact problem that I'd just said I had 🤥 ...and so I continued dancing.

(I even remember the very awkward moment that I pulled up to dancing with a car I'd just bought. Yup, me pulling up to my heavily discounted dance classes after just purchasing a car. Sound a little like patient situations??)

This is not to say that when people don't want to pay to come and see you that they don't like you. But what it IS saying is that just because someone gives financial reasons for NOT seeing you, does not always mean that they literally don't have the money.

AND it does not mean that making it less money (by discounting or lowering fees) is going to solve the problem.

People need to be sold on three things in order to invest money:

- you (they trust that you can help them & have their best interests at heart, they feel connected to you)

- your method/process (that this is the right solution for them)

- themselves (that they'll show up to get the results, that they're "worth it" & spending this money is not a selfish/irresponsible thing to do).

If they do not have these, you can be as cheap as you like (or even free); they're still not going to be rushing to come and see you. Trust me on that.

And it's important to know that the patient is not necessarily aware of these things. Yes, sometimes they may very well know that they're trying to "let you down easy" the way I did with my dancing teacher, but other times they may just be aware that they're hesitant about spending that money and not consciously understand what exactly is making them hesitant. And of course, there will be some people who literally don't have enough money in their account to come and see you or couldn't make a plan to get it even if they really had strong desire/value of it - but that happens more seldom than we think.

So start to get curious about your own language and behaviour around money, and get curious about your patients too rather than judging them or taking it personally. It will open up a whole new world for you 🌍

If you'd like to hear more about this topic, check out the podcast episode by clicking on the button below: