Tara and I had the honor earlier this year of becoming founding contributors of Integrative Practitioner, an amazing online community for practitioners of integrative medicine:
The Community already has more than 2,400 qualified members, including physicians, chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopaths, herbalists, nurses, traditional healers, dieticians and massage therapists. In all, they represent more than 30 disciplines and come from 15 countries and all 50 states.
The Online Nursing Degree Directory listed us in their Top 50 Alternative Medicine Blogs. Thanks to the ONDD!
The list is worth a gander from a practitioner perspective. It’s well categorized, with a few good sites I’d never seen. Head over and take a look.
Here are our favorite acupuncture-specific online resources for practice growth and management, in no particular order. Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments.
Okay - I haven’t tried this out, but I have to admit the demo looks pretty slick.
Patient Prompt emails, calls, or text messages your clients to remind them of their appointments, allows them to respond to confirm, and it does it all automatically. Reminder calls consume quite a bit of time for us these days, but I can’t imagine not doing them. This might be just the solution.
I’m not sure how patients would respond to the automated system. You can actually record your own message so that clients hear a familiar voice, but I still tend to lean more toward the full-service, “real person” approach from a service quality perspective. If you’ve tried it, or have any thoughts, leave a comment and let us know.
Chuck McKay, author, marketing guru, and founder of Advance My Practice is looking for practitioners with a talent for writing who might be interested in joining their team of contributing editors. You’d be writing for fame, not fortune, but it looks like Chuck’s putting together a good team, and he’s a nice fella, too.
If you’ve got something to say about marketing a practice, you can contact Chuck here.
ChineseMedicineTools.com offers a broad spectrum of TCM practitioner resources - you’ll find everything from forums, podcasts and a wiki to product suppliers and research. You can even get your own hosted blog. The site has over 400 registered users, so the forums have a reasonable level of activity. Registered users can submit their own sites/blogs to the site’s listings. Check it out here: ChineseMedicineTools.com
SpectraSoft has a free white paper on reducing no-shows and cancellations. While their specialty is software for physiotherapists and other health care pros, some of the tips are quite good, and applicable to any CAM/holistic practice.
“No-Show” White Paper
(You’ll have to register, but it’s just a four-liner.)
Okay, so technically this isn’t really a business resource, but the Rosenthal Center’s CAM Information Resource has a heap of great links to online alternative health resources, including numerous journals and online databases.
It’s well worth taking a look - it’s an excellent compilation, and the resources are for both CAM professionals and consumers.
First things first. Accepting credit cards in your holistic practice is a must - you can read more on that here.
That being said, there can be significant barriers to actually doing it. Assuming you can get a merchant account, setup fees can be several hundred dollars, then there’s a monthly fee to have the terminal in your office, plus the per-transaction cost.
Although most of these podcasts are MD-related, there’s some great anatomy review material, and a number of links the news section to alternative medicine articles.
