To succeed in any business, you need to separate yourself from the competition. Your product or service needs to be more effective and efficient than your competitors’. In the chiropractic business, the rules are slightly skewed. Each of your competitors has an advanced degree and they all have the goal of helping their patients remain healthy. In a business where the training, services performed, and goals aren’t drastically different between providers, managing your practice effectively is essential to have a leg up on the competition.

While smartphones and PDAs have the media buzzing, they may not be the most effective way to manage your practice. It might seem convenient to have your appointment schedule and internet access in one portable device, but putting your practice in the hands of an unintegrated set of software programs not designed for a chiropractor is a risk you might not want to take.

Although the portability of PDAs and smartphones may seem like a major advantage, it could also be their biggest problem. Imagine forgetting to charge your smartphone and having it go dead just as a patient walks into the exam room. Now, with no backup system in place, you are left high and dry and looking unprepared in front of your patients, without a way to review their patient history and previous exams.

Several of the new chiropractic applications were developed to integrate every aspect of practice management, from automated patient check-in, advanced scheduling, and appointment history, to electronic health records, HCFA electronic billing, and SOAP notes. These practice management programs can also perform statistical analysis on this integrated info without transferring or formatting files from multiple applications.

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