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‘Same-as-last-time’ documentation is a sure route to trouble
Practice Central So, you purchased an electronic healthcare record (EHR) program. Congratulations! Maybe you were one of the early adopters who were riding the incentive wave that allowed you to tap into that $44,000 per eligible provider. Maybe you jumped on the bandwagon a little later. Either way, you took the plunge, and you have the software. Now how’s it going? If you’re like many if not most, those first few days and weeks with your new software were a far cry from what you had thought they would be.Connect with healthcare colleagues and your community through posture
You know addressing posture is important to effectively care for back and neck pain. After all, the best adjustment is fighting an uphill battle against gravity if a patient slumps in front of a computer for 10 hours a day, shoulders hunched up to their ears. A good chair, a standing desk, and good shoes can help. But when some- one’s unconscious default posture is “slumped over with head jutting forward and spine collapsed back- wards,” you need to engage them to change their postural habits.Family practice: Children can earn while they learn about business
Money Management Are you adjusting your child’s working bone? As a chiropractor, you know and understand bones. But have you ever heard of a “working bone”? This phrase isn’t in reference to bone functionality but is a metaphor for a human trait that you may be able to flex in your practice to teach your children the work ethic while saving tax dollars. To share an example, our family was raking leaves one fall and my older daughter was protesting against her manual labor task.Foot orthotics and kinesiology tape offer a synergistic solution
Research Results In many ways, kinesiology taping and foot orthotics share the same goals: to control and encourage proper movement patterns. It only makes sense that they are often used together in the clinic. Here are a few ways to successfully incorporate taping into your orthotic evaluation and prescriptions. A tape application is not only a treatment but a pretest of how effective an orthotic will be at managing your patient. You can see if a patient has flat feet, but it is difficult to determine visually how much of your patient’s dysfunction can be corrected with a foot orthotic.How cutaneous stimulation can help treat pain in athletes
Clinical Concerns Pain is the most common reason athletes seek medical treatment. Sore muscles and joints are not only physically annoying but they hinder training—and ultimately performance. Research tells us that pain and nociception alter motor output, which can lead to dysfunction in the injured area as well as elsewhere throughout the body. Pain is complicated. It involves a number of factors—including a person’s mood, memories, genetics, and expectations. These are in addition to the noxious stimulus itself, which sends a threatening signal to the brain (nociception).Learn how to treat neuropathy with nutrients
Wellness Approach If your patients have diabetes, there is a good chance they also experience symptoms of neuropathy. And they might tell you about a tingling feeling (or loss of feeling) in their feet, legs, and fingers. While in non-diabetic patients this could be attributed to pinched nerves and addressed with adjustments, an individual with diabetes most likely requires supplemental assistance and lifestyle changes. As for supplementation, there are specific ingredients that can stop—and even reverse—the causes and symptoms of neuropathy.Master the power of direct response marketing
Marketing Matters If $20 bills were sold for $5, how many would you buy? When you put your marketing dollars to work doing direct response marketing, $5 of marketing can easily turn into $20 of profits from sales—if you do it right. In an ideal world, marketing for chiropractic care would be unnecessary. Everyone would subscribe to the idea that chiropractic is valuable, and every patient would refer friends and family, who would then also become your raving fans. You would have nothing to do but treat patients.Working with pro athletes can elevate your practice
Feature When Kyle Prusso, DC, graduated from chiropractic college, he couldn’t afford to open a new practice, so he went to work at his father’s construction company. He pulled up to a home one day to build an addition—not knowing it was the residence of the head athletic trainer for the Oakland Raiders football team. Prusso got to know the trainer’s wife, and she convinced her husband to meet with Prusso. When he talked to him the trainer liked what he heard. Shortly thereafter he invited Prusso to work with the team. Since 2005, he’s been the team’s head chiropractor.
