Archive for December, 2007
« Previous EntriesTop 10 Pool Rules and No Peeing in the Pool
Sunday, December 30th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
Broken any pool rules lately?
Growing up in Long Island, there were many summers I spent swimming in the pools of neighbors, relatives, and friends. We had a pool at my parents home in Huntington and the only rule I can remember was that there was to be no peeing in the pool [...]
Ronald McDonald Gets Chiropractic Adjustment
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
I don’t know if they still do this in the USA but in Panama Ronald McDonald still goes around to hospitals and orphanages to visit kids there. During one chiropractic mission to Panama (I think in 2003) a chiropractor from Florida met crossed paths with Ronald at one of the child centers.
What [...]
Blogging SOAP Note Taking Laptop Stations
Friday, December 21st, 2007by Michael Dorausch
More photos that I found on the front desk computer. These may not be of too much interest to non-chiropractors but they are actually nice and efficient workstation setups that we’ve used successfully for a few years now.
3 Foot Efficient Laptop Workstation
There are 3 setups like this in my LA chiropractic [...]
Plastic Spine Keychains
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
There was a Chiropractic Christmas Tree news post on Planet Chiropractic today with a mention about spinal keychains that we hand out in my LA office. The photos shown did not show the keychains so well and someone had emailed me asking about them. I found photos I already took of the [...]
WGA Strike Affecting Stress Levels
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
I’m not the only chiropractor in West LA that has been effected by the writers strike. I’ve spoken to a number of my colleagues and have heard similar reports: an increase in office visits the first two weeks of the strike, a decrease in visits to studios and filming locations, a growing [...]
Chiropractic Christmas Trees
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
There is likely not many places you’ll go this holiday season where you can find bones hanging on the Christmas tree. They may be made of plastic, but this crazy chiropractor in Los Angeles likes to decorate the chiropractic Christmas tree with little spine key chains, which get handed out to patients during the upcoming week of Christmas. It beats giving them sugary candy canes.
The pint size models of a spinal column, complete with pelvis, are branded with the office name and phone number. They’ve been a tradition in our office for the past four years. Underneath the tree are the kinds of gifts you’d expect from your local chiropractor. We have orthopedic pillows, inflatable exercise balls, chewable vitamins, daily vitamin packs, cervical neck rolls (so you don’t have to use a towel), and even some digital cameras. You have to be at the top of Santa’s list if you’re receiving digital cameras from your neighborhood chiropractor.
Things get busy in our ADIO office this time of year but chiropractic news will likely quite down until after the New Year’s. I do know there will be some posts made to the chiropractic blogs section throughout next week, for those of you that like to get a fix of fresh content daily.
I notice there’s been a number of search queries for Christmas related content on this web site over the past two weeks so I scanned through some previous news articles to see what could be shared. There was this Twas the Night Before Christmas poem that was posted in December of 2000. It’s from a vaccine awareness advocate and it’s not the kind of holiday poem you may expect.
A year later, in December 2001, someone forwarded us this T’was A Chiropractic Christmas poem. This is a good one for the office.
Also from December of 2001 is A Christmas Wish from Dr. James Sigafoose. Back to December of 2000 and an audio presentation that’s now seven years old (man time flies) which was recorded in a small town in Pennsylvania. The article is called Christmas with Sigafoose and it includes a link to a 30 minute audio file from a holiday based patient appreciation event that was given on the day of the recording. We’ve got that audio somewhere in MP3 format, I’ve just got to locate it.
December of 2005 and chiropractic offices across the planet were hard at work to make sure Santa made it to all of his scheduled stops. Chiropractors Worldwide Help Keep Santa Going is the article which features a few chiropractors from throughout the US. With all the iPhones, Wii game systems, Xbox 360s, bicycles, model trains sets (do kids still get those?), and fire trucks built for five year olds, Santa’s going to require a very healthy spine and optimal functioning nervous system this year. Good thing he’s got lots of choices for great chiropractors that will help keep him going.
Lets not forget those fabulous and incredible Chiropractic Assistants that are changing lives. A quality chiropractic office is going to have at least one Super CA working the front desk. Lets not forget the back desk, the billing department, those that assist in adjusting rooms, massage therapists, staff that make reminder phone calls, the ones that hand filled out those hundreds of holiday cards, and numerous other tasks they manage to complete on a daily basis. I am extremely grateful for our staff and am appreciative to have them in the office.
Let’s all have a safe and happy holiday season, Merry Christmas to everyone!
Chiropractor Front Desk Photo Directory
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
One of my staff members is out of the office on vacation and I’ve just sat down at her computer to do some upgrades like installing FireFox and Picasa.
After doing the Picasa install the software scanned the drive for images and I discovered hundreds of photos (some almost NSFW) on the hard [...]
Googling Others Beats Being Self Googled
Monday, December 17th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
Have you been googling yourself lately? If so, there’s no reason to be ashamed? According to a Digital Footprints report released today by Pew Internet, many are doing it, and they’ve even googled others as well.
By the time I sat down to write this post there were more than 360 articles appearing [...]
Top American Healthcare Associations Based on Search Popularity
Sunday, December 16th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
Health-care related topics are often times reported to be one of the most researched topics on the internet, especially when one suspects they have symptoms of a particular disease or condition. A brief scanning of today’s health related news returns headlines related to carcinogens, bird flu, cancer risks, over-the-counter drug safety questions, prescription medication safety concerns, breast cancer and chemotherapy, vaccine recalls, reports of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in hospitals, and stories of mercury found in eye products like eyeliner and mascara. Nearly every major media web site features at least one health section that provides original health-care related content, or aggregates syndicated content from other popularly known health resources.
Well-known hospitals, medical associations, and prestigious journals are commonly mentioned in these news articles, and readers are sometimes given an opportunity to click through on articles, taking them to websites that focus more specifically on the published topic, whether it be condition related, drug related, or disease related. But links are not always provided, which leaves users with the requirement of searching (often via one of the major search engines) for more information. The ability to track search queries provides us with an opportunity to study the popularity, consumer consciousness, and/or brand awareness of various healthcare associations and organizations in the United States.
Taking a single keyword term we were able to determine which groups currently command the greatest amount of search traffic related to their association, organization, or society names. I believe all of the health-care organizations and associations addressed in this article rely on donations, membership, and financial grants as a source of income, making this a significantly important topic when it comes to branding and overall share of mind.
The parameters set out for this research were to use a single keyword term and to limit results to the top 100 searches. We incorporated the use of a third-party application that periodically compiles a database of over 300 million terms, which is updated on a weekly basis, so we could pull from a wide array of results.
Results below are listed in order of most searches performed for a particular keyword phrase, to the least searched phrase, which still had results appearing in the top 100 search queries. The average number of searches (for each key phrase) for the past 90 days is listed to the right of the term. Results came from US-based search queries.
Search Term: American
Results: 9 health-care related results in top 100 search queries.
1) American Heart Association — 1,557
2) American Cancer Society — 1,490
3) American Red Cross — 1,367
4) American Diabetes Association — 863
5) American Medical Association — 859
6) American Dental Association — 366
7) American Lung Association — 323
American Psychological Association — 288
9) American Academy of Pediatrics — 271
In reviewing the terms we can group Heart, Cancer, Diabetes, and Lungs, into a category of disease and/or condition focused organizations. The remaining five can be categorized into various specialties of medicine, with the possible exception of the American Red Cross, which is likely best known in the US for blood drives.
For those interested, if we dipped into the top 200 search terms (that included the word American), results included: American Journal of Nursing (227), American Diabetic Association (177), American Nurses Association (174), and American Psychological Association Publications (154).
Three things I discovered from performing this research is that “American” is a commonly used term amongst US-based healthcare associations and organizations, and all of the nine listed have strong brand recognition amongst consumers, with the American Heart Association being the most searched of the group.
If you’re curious, perform a Google News query for any of the above search phrases (here are two examples: American Heart Association News Search and American Red Cross News Search), you may be surprised to discover the great number of relevant results returned.
Have a term you’d like to see related research on? Contact the editor (yellow envelope image under title of this article) with your request.
Ron Paul Revolution Quantcast November Report
Saturday, December 15th, 2007by Michael Dorausch, DC
Earlier today I posted news to Planet Chiropractic (Addicted to Ron Paul) regarding a significant change in web related data, when comparing web site traffic from September through November, for BarackObama.com, HillaryClinton.com, and RonPaul2008.com.
The news section of the Planet Chiropractic website does not support comments so this post was created for those [...]