Many times when either answering emails through our website or when at seminars, doctors question us on how we have used technology to aid in building and sustaining a thriving practice. For chiropractors who understand the need for x-rays and especially CBP® Doctors; x-rays do the talking when it comes to patient care, education and retention.

In the early years of CBP®, we were taught to give patients a “New Patient Report Package” which is like what many of you do every day.

The difference is that instead of simply using “tear off sheets” which though helpful – are generic, especially that you have to hand write on them which is unfortunately less professional, custom or specific to the patient. With x-rays, it was always challenging to make something patients would understand, and also objective and comprehensive enough that if they were shown to another doctor would be objective, concise, and in lay terms.

Before PostureRay®, we had a word document template and then would take digital pictures of the x-rays, insert them manually (of course painstakingly resizing, cropping and editing each image prior to importing into the word file), then edit the text for the patient as well as their pertinent subluxation findings and deviations from normal (i.e. Percentage the patient was from our normal model).

A new patient report handout is nothing new; Dr. Don Harrison trained us all to give this to all new patients. The difference now is to incorporate patient’s x-rays and have the reports that are very professional. The old manual way, each report would take at least half an hour to make, not to mention that we actually had to measure the subluxations by hand and calculate deviation percentages ourselves!

On follow up reports, we had to do the same thing, showing the patient’s pre and post x-rays, without the capacity to actually compare digitized numbers – again having to calculate everything and measure everything by hand.

The manual way works very well until an office gets busy, and you soon realize you have to dedicate a CA to make all new patient packets, taking them away from actually aiding in more critical office and patient procedures.

Now fast forward to today. Using the PostureRay® system, all x-rays are easily digitized, and the time to perform this task is mere minutes! Once digitized, any variety of reports can be generated, not to mention those comparison reports that took so much time at the resolution of a program of care.

Educating the patient at the time of the patient’s report of findings is necessary and should be common as nearly every chiropractor does this to some magnitude in his/her office.

Here are three tips for better exposure of your office using PostureRay®.

1. Place clinical x-ray reports in the x-ray jackets every time a patient checks his/her x-rays out of the office to go to a general practitioner, physiatrist, or surgeon. This should be done every time! Soon, the local doctors in your area begin to understand why you are on top of patient care due to the detailed nature of Posture Ray’s Impression reports, not to mention when comparison reports are placed in the jackets. Doing just this task has increased medical referrals back to our offices, and opened lines of communication with many top doctors in our local areas.
2. Another tip is to always find out the patient’s primary doctor and send him/her your initial reports with, of course, the PostureRay® Impression reports — regardless if the doctor ‘actually’ referred him/her to your office or not. You would be surprised on how many primary doctors begin referring patients, when they along with their staff realize that chiropractors such as yourself actually perform quality patient care and documentation.
3. For those doctors who care for patients involved in motor vehicle crashes or work-related injuries, here is a very easy tip: Find attorneys in your area and demonstrate how subtle ligamentous injuries such as instability can clearly and objectively be documented using the technology of PostureRay®. If attorneys know that your notes are bullet proof, and you have x-ray images that clearly demonstrate injuries, they will be more likely to refer to your practice.

It is common that many PostureRay® equipped offices report that attorneys actually ask to have the marked images exported by their office for them to use in the mediations as well as at trial. Of course, once the x-rays are digitized, generating reports, comparative reports (pre-post care or following injuries, Figure 1 & Figure 2), exporting marked x-ray images with normal spinal models superimposed is a snap to perform!

So if you are ready to take the next step in letting your x-rays market your practice, consider becoming more objective in your x-ray documentation on every case regardless if they are personal injury, cash, or Medicare, because not only does using PostureRay® save you precious time, it also makes your practice that much more marketable and bullet proof.

For more information on PostureRay®, please email sales@postureco.com or go to their website atwww.postureco.com.