Maildesk Weekend Inbox Recycling

By Michael Dorausch, D.C.

I believe the last time I covered postcards and the other mail coming to my California chiropractic office was earlier this month. There’s another stack on the desk and I’m posting information here before sending everything to the recycle bin.

(photo: iPhone loving chiropractor Russell Kun and Butler Pennsylvania Chiropractor Ram Parikh. Picture was taken during attendance at a educational conference)

Stuff in the mail: I received a postcard from the International Chiropractors Association of California (notice that’s chiropractors and not chiropractic) in regards to a seminar taking place in Los Angeles on November 15. Hotel location is the LAX Four Points Sheraton (9750 Airport Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045). Event is taking place on a Saturday and it is a personal injury insurance related seminar.

It’s not clear according to the postcard but I’m guessing that the seminar is only $99, since there is a sentence that reads “ask us about our $99 seminars” underneath their address information. For those doing personal injury in Southern California, this looks like it could be a good Saturday event to attend (I’ll be in Las Vegas).

Dr. Kyle LeBlanc has sent me mail from St. Louis, Missouri. Upon opening it I see the headlines Create More Time, Receive More New Patients And Give Yourself a Raise! After that there’s 6 pages of small text that I’m honestly not going to bother reading. Must be for a seminar taking place in Los Angeles because the words Los Angeles, California and November 15th & 16th are in bold on the last page. Personally, I dislike multipage mailings like these. Postcards work much better in getting my attention.

The Southern California University of Health Sciences (that’s a Chiropractic College in case you’re wondering) has sent me two different postcards along with a brochure mailer. I give the school credit for being consistent with their continuing education marketing efforts. I get a lot more mail from this school than I do from Life West and Cleveland Chiropractic College (2 schools where I’ve attended lots of continuing education programs).

The first postcard is regarding the 2008 interdisciplinary symposium on sports injuries of the extremities. I just noticed it takes place on October 25 and 26 so I’ve missed out on that since I was at Barcamp Los Angeles (number six) all day today. It was a 13 hour continuing education event which included four hours of technique. It’s likely this event is held more than once a year so if you’re interested contact the alumni association for more details. 562-902-3337

The second postcard are received from SCU was a general list of events taking place during 2008. Pretty busy to get all this information on one oversized postcard, but nice to get everything in one glance. What’s odd though is that nearly every seminar listed on the card has already taken place. Out of about 19 events that I can count, there’s only one still upcoming, an all in one day CEU program taking place on the chiropractic campus in Whittier California. Contact the school for more information at 562-902-3379.

The brochure from SCU (when did they start calling it that?) was specifically for the sports injuries symposium so I won’t cover that again since the event was yesterday and today. I like postcards, a lot more than the brochures, much easier to read. I also think they stand out better amongst all the mail being sent to the office.

I’ve got a supersized postcard from a chiropractic software company called Practice Studio. For years I’ve had a really hard time getting good information about billing software for chiropractors, I always hear someone tell me a horror story (not about this particular product but all software billing products). Here’s the funny thing for me.. I’ve been a practicing chiropractor for more than 10 years. This postcard reads Chart Notes a Pain? Need an integrated EMR / PM System?

I’ll be honest, I have no idea what EMR stands for. Electronic management reports, electronically managed reports, extraterrestrial multiplying radiographer? I’m assuming PM stands for Practice Management but I could be wrong. Maybe they should make a special postcard for retards like me. I do like the picture of the touchscreen, seeing lots of that lately from software billing companies. I’m really looking forward to touchscreen marking of x-rays. That’s going to be sweet.