In celebration of Chiropractic Awareness Week 2013 the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has been encouraging parents to take care of their backs. According to the BCA, 79% of people have experienced back or neck pain at some point in their lives with 61% of those being parents.
More worrying for the parent/child relationship, 55% of parents reported that their back or neck pain prevented them from lifting or carrying their child. To help parents to prevent or minimise the effects of back pain the BCA has published some handy advice sheets on their website. The guides cover areas such as posture, stretching exercises, pregnancy, outdoor and indoor activities and play.
As you’d expect the BCA was not alone in promoting the Chiropractic Awareness Week which started on 15th April. Chiropractors across the UK played their part in promoting the ways in which chiropractic treatments could help to treat or prevent back pain. With NHS commissioning for chiropractic treatments being limited, the majority of chiropractic patients tend to pay privately. This puts an added time pressure on chiropractors who not only have to provide the treatments but also manage their own administration as they care for multiple patients.
Making use of an efficient virtual service can take a lot of the pressure out of the administration burden and enable chiropractors to maximise their time with patients. Services such as telephone answering and diary management help the practice to present a professional image whilst minimising the time spent on administration or having to interrupt treatments to answer the phone. But it is the additional services offered by businesses such as Clinic Appointments which can also make a major difference to time management. SMS appointment reminders have been shown to boost patient attendance whilst digitising patient notes eliminates the time spent in searching through filing cabinets as the patient sits in the waiting room.
One of the BCA leaflets provides handy hints on protecting our backs when on the computer. For busy chiropractors and other health professionals we’d like to add one more item to the list and that is to reduce the time spent sitting down on the phone or computer and let our virtual assistants take the strain.