It makes good sense — and dollars — to update your office record-keeping system.

If your receptionist spends time making entries in five or six separate places for each patient visit; If your delinquent accounts have a tendency to get out of hand; or if you suspect your income doesn’t quite measure up to services rendered, your procedure could probably stand revamping.

A pegboard system of record keeping has been the best answer to simplifying and solidifying procedures in many chiropractic offices. This system uses a writing board with pegs down the left side and special no-carbon forms perforated to fit onto the pegs. With only one writing, detailed information on every patient visit is recorded on the charge slip, receipt, day book, patient’s ledger, monthly statement, and an appointment slip for the next visit.

Since any outstanding balance is shown on the slip, both you and the patient have an every-visit reminder and can take steps if it starts getting too large. The automatic balancing features of the system give you control over the accuracy of posting, plus a check on possible sources of money leakage.

A doctor in Ohio found out the hard way how important that feature is. He had built a new clinic to take care of a rapidly growing practice. He installed new equipment, added staff members and streamlined his procedures — except his bookkeeping system. A few months later he was shocked to realize his bank balance was definitely not reflecting the large volume of services his clinic was rendering. His practice consultant’s questioning revealed that, in the daily rush, charges for many of his services were neither being collected nor getting on the books.

A one-entry posting system designed especially for chiropractors was installed.

Changing over to the new system required only a short period of adjustment and it wasn’t long until things were running more smoothly than ever before.

The first thing the doctor noticed was that his daily cash receipts jumped upward. More patients paid at the time of their visit. With numbered receipts, no charges got lost. Since his receptionist’s posting time was cut in half, she was no longer behind in filing insurance reports; since statements were always ready to mail, billing was prompt — and so were payments. The receptionist also found she had extra moments to spend on jobs that previously never seemed to get done.

The immediate increase in income was gratifying, but the doctor also found the system gave him many other advantages he had never known before. One is the time it saves him, as well as his staff. The charge slips and receipts are coded for all the different services he renders. He only had to made a check mark beside the proper services and his receptionist knows how much to collect.

Having these codes on your permanent daily records gives you a breakdown of charges and services, too, so that weaknesses and inequities can be spotted. A Florida doctor found this feature helpful. An analysis showed that an expensive piece of equipment was not being used often enough to justify keeping it, so he replaced it with a duplicate of another instrument that was used to much patients often had to wait. Analyzing the data provided by the one-entry pegboard system can easily pinpoint services that aren’t productive enough for the time and expense they require.

Patients are favorably impressed, of course, with a smooth operation, accuracy in records and billing, and time-saving efficiency.

So if you want to keep your practice up-to-date and efficient, don’t overlook your record-keeping system. Installing a chiropractic pegboard system could do for your practice what automatic pin-setting did for bowling — increase efficiency and save time and money.