Recent laws in New Jersey and California represent a disturbing trend that will negatively impact a practice’s ability to collect monies from patients, as well as expose them to significant penalties if the practice does not follow the mandatory guidelines to a T. Please be aware that a similar law may be coming to your state. The time to act is before the law is passed.
The Wonders of E-mail
Have you sent or received an e-mail message in the past 24 hours? According to a recent survey conducted by CommerceNet/Nielsen Media Research, an average of 30 million people use an e-mail account in a 24-hour span, including four million who are not regular Internet users.1
This figure is just one of several statistics that show how important e-mail is becoming to the average computer user.
Need more proof? Witness these numbers:
- A Yahoo survey states that 97 percent of all Internet users correspond to each other via e-mail.
- According to a report from GVU8 Technologies, 84 percent of all Internet users say they can't live without e-mail.
- E-mail is an important factor in the corporate sector. The American Management Association says that 57 percent of all American business executives rely on e-mail as a form of communication.
- A Find/SVP survey reported recently that 59 percent of all adults with Internet access send or receive e-mail every day. Another 30 percent use their e-mail accounts at least once a week.
E-mail is also becoming a way of marketing one's products and services.
If you do not currently have access to the Internet, you should consider setting up an e-mail account and getting online with an Internet service provider. For a small monthly fee, you could greatly expand the way you communicate with patients, and market your practice. Having a place on the Internet also gives you access to hundreds of chiropractic websites and sources of valuable information, a potential patient base that stretches into the tens of millions nationwide.
Reference
1. Hamilton A. Internet's killer app crosses over. Ziff-Davis, Inc. ([url=http://www.zdnet.com]http://www.zdnet.com[/url]), April 15, 1998.