Independent healthcare practitioners such as Chiropractors face unique challenges unknown to mainstream medical practitioners who often associate with hospitals and larger group practices to acquire new patients and grow their business. Independent practitioners frequently invest substantial time and advertising dollars to attract new patients, then continue that investment with existing patients to generate loyalty, return visits and referrals if they are to sustain the growth of their practice. Currently the vast majority of solo practitioners use inefficient, outdated and cumbersome methods to attract new patients, educate existing ones and communicate with former patients, if they even do it at all. Methods include expensive image advertising with no measurable return, patient education programs that are time and labor intensive and sporadic mailings which are expensive, time consuming and often ineffective.

Ultimately most Independent health practitioners live their lives on a rollercoaster. During slow times the doctor and staff move into crisis mode and focus on marketing and patient communications. By doing so, the practice typically gets busier and more successful. Unfortunately once the doctor and staff become busy with patient care, collections and insurance billing, things such as marketing and patient communications suffer ultimately causing a decline in new patient flow, patient visits, referrals and eventually income. Once this decline becomes uncomfortable enough, the office once again shifts its attention to marketing and patient communications as both the doctor and staff have less patient and administrative work consuming their time. For most solo practitioners this is an endless frustrating process of growth and decline. Very few are ever able to get off the rollercoaster because they fail to develop the systems required to maintain or automate the very programs that made them successful in the first place. They are simply untrained to do so and are too busy being doctors.

Doctors are notorious late adopters of information technology. While virtually every business uses the Internet and new technology in their daily activities, doctors still feebly hold onto old manual systems, especially when it concerns marketing and patient communications. This is not because they shun technology. It is simply because they dont have the desire spend money or alter their office procedures or take time to learn new methods unless there is a substantial payoff. Even today, very few healthcare offices use the Internet or email to communicate with their patients even though patients overwhelmingly would welcome it. Very few doctors even have a web site.

While companies such as WebMD offer new solutions for patient management, routing and billing, none has yet to address the marketing and patient communications needs of the solo or small group practitioner.

The key to penetrating this market with a new concept or technology is to build something that requires no new hardware, has virtually no learning curve, is simple to use and changes little or nothing of the office routine, yet delivers tremendous benefits.