Dr. Steven Conway’s unique dual-professional degrees as a chiropractor and attorney enable him to fulfill his passion of protecting and enhancing the chiropractic profession. An energetic presenter, his very practical Medicare presentations remove fear and provide an easy path for chiropractors to properly document Medicare cases. He is a second-generation chiropractor whose passion is enhancing and protecting the chiropractic profession. He is CEO of the ChiroLaw law firm and Conway Consulting Group.
In this episode of TechTalk Podcast, Brad Cost, Dr. Jay Greenstein, and Dr. Steven Conway sit down to discuss:
Steven's transition from chiropractic to law, while staying involved in the chiro industry.
Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin's creation & it's difference to other associations.
The importance and necessity of joining your state association!
3:38 – Chiropractic school to law school. “I graduated in 1983 from Logan, where I met my wife. We dissected Leroy, fell in love in the cadaver lab and got married before we got out. We started our career back then and had a positive experience in chiropractic. We had a very big clinic in Jamesville, Wisconsin where we saw a ton of people and had a lot of fun. I ended up hurting my wrist and realized I couldn't stay in chiropractic, but still wanted to help my profession. Back in the nineties, I applied to this tiny little law school in St. Petersburg, Florida called Stetson University. It's the number one ranked trial law school in the nation. I got in, did really well, and loved the experience. Since I've been out, I've been able to help chiropractors both in the chiropractic arena and with my legal career.”
5:40 – The Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin. “You don't wake up one morning saying I'm going to start a state association. I'm not going to go into the negatives, but there were obviously some negatives that were happening. For many years, we were trying to fix it within, but sometimes you have to go outside. It's one of those things where it's the only decision you can do. I decided I was going to do this, so I met with another doctor that had a similar feeling, and we decided to do it ourselves. We're an opt-in organization served by a very high purpose, high-energy group. People are attracted to our organization - not because of the traditional ways, but because they want to be a part of it. That allows us to do pretty amazing things as we run this organization. I've not had one complaint come in. Everyone chips in. Everyone helps. We start out with motivation and that sets the tone for organization. The rest is just fun. It's been a fun journey with a fun group.”
10:21 – Join your state association! “I've been lecturing around all these different state associations and every time I'm up on front of the stage, I tell everyone they need to be aware of their state association. It's your strength. It's our strength as a profession. The state associations are the powerhouse of our profession. If you have a weak association or no participation in it, these challenges can roll over you. Our group is planning the next 10 years right now, and we want our members, our vendors and their communities to be successful. State associations are a great resource and are always doing things to help you.”
15:32 – Staying hands-on. “It was a unique transition. I truly love chiropractic. It is my heart. I'm basically a chiropractor with a law degree. Because once I got out of law school, I was in a 300-member law firm, doing Medicare audit defense and helping chiropractors across the United States. It started out with a national issue with Medicare. There were so many chiropractors about 15 years ago being audited with Medicare, so that shifted me into being an audit defense attorney. There's a lot to it and the average chiropractor just doesn't know. All you had to do is teach them what to do – in general, chiropractors are honest, decent, good people. They're just out there trying to help people, but their error ratio was in the 90%, where the rest of the professions were all at 15%. I've trained about 40,000 chiropractors on this over the years, and the issue is gone. I still remember every time that we would get to a certain point, chief medical directors would send us the graph showing us the chiropractic error ratio at 33%, then 28%, then it being off their radar. I was also an attorney defending their cases. I put my skills into helping the profession, which is why I went to law school. It was one of those things where I always had the desire to do it, and it was nice to have it go to fruition.”
21:45 – Is the chiropractic profession getting smarter legally and legislatively across America? “Yes and no. They want to be smarter legally and legislatively, but we're still a cottage industry. Most chiropractors are isolated and don’t find data, compliance or stuff like that intriguing and interesting. When they understand how easy it is to be compliant and use the data to help them and their patients, they’ll want it. It has to be simplistic for them to come in because they just got into chiropractic to heal people. They're treating people every day. That's the most important part in their life. We just have to make the hard things easy for them to implement. That's why the Medicare thing went so well - I made a trust bridge between workers' compensation and Medicare. As weird as it may seem, they're very similar. I just made it easy and trustworthy for them. The work you guys are doing for me is extremely valuable. I can't wait to play with more of it. We're talking ahead of time here with the AI and all the different things.”
41:10 – The set up of the Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin. “In the very beginning, we were all just chiropractors trying to figure out what we're going to do. Since I had more flexibility being attorney in a law firm, I took over the executive director position. It's not a title, it's really responsibility. We also run a little differently too - we don't have committees, which is kind of odd for a state association. We have the power team that meets every other month, which is about 30 to 40 people that come together in the middle of the state and put out what projects we want to do. The people that love that project stay with that project until it's done.”
45:08 – Building a relationship with Senator Johnson. “Our organization's been very politically active from the beginning. We formed to change the exam in Wisconsin, so we were in the Capitol all the time. When you start working with all your state legislature, you'll find that the US senators, when it's campaign time, come to all their events. Senator Ron Johnson saw me everywhere and he loves what we do. It really comes to just showing up. Everyone thinks there's some magical thing that's going on, but it's just hard work. I’m basically all over the state. I've knocked on thousands of doors. I'm at all these different things. I got to know Senator Johnson at those different components, but we also had a very close connection with what was happening with the COVID vaccine. During COVID, our organization never shut down and actually held a conference. We rented out the entire resort, so we didn't have to worry, and people saw that. They saw that we were on the front page of the LA Times because we're promoting health freedom. Just show up and you’ll get to meet cool people.”
CONTACT STEVEN
Comments