Promoting Your Allied Healthcare Practice Tip #5: Don’t talk negatively about your competitors

You might even want to say something complementary about them. In healthcare especially, being perceived as greedy or overly competitive will hurt you. If yours is the only practice making sales calls and asking for referrals, that could become even more of a perception. When you make sales calls, make it your mission not merely to increase business but also to benefit people. Your competitive presence might provide the incentive that raises the quality of care across your region. And as a resource available to your patients’ physicians, you add value to the care they provide, too.

When competition is seen as an important but friendly (and fun!) game, everyone has the chance to win. But when competition devolves into warfare and turf battles, everyone looses, especially your patients and their doctors.

Neuroscientists Uncover Brain Region Involved in Voluntary Behavior

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have deciphered the activity of an area of the brain that could one day prove vital in the development of neural prostheses--within-the-brain implants that would translate thought into movement in paralyzed patients. The results of this study were published as the featured article in the November 8 issue of Neuron...

The experiment shows that it is "the monkey's own choice that activates these areas," says Cui, and not the sensory stimuli provided by the visual target it sees on the computer screen. This finding is significant, Andersen says, because "this is the earliest stage in the brain found so far that is actively related to movement plans." ...

The lab is working toward the development of implanted neural prosthetic devices that would serve as an interface between severely paralyzed individuals' brain signals and their artificial limbs--allowing thoughts to control movement. To assist in designing a more optimal prosthetic, they are now examining whether the decision to make a reaching motion is first made in PRR, or is made in another area of the brain and then transferred to PRR to form the movement plan.

Physician Ranking Program. Is O&P Next?

Check out this story! Allowing patients to rank their providers would be a fantastic idea for the orthotic and prosthetic field, too!

Promoting Your Allied Healthcare Practice Tip #4: Be a Valuable Resource

Be a valuable resource. Don’t show up and just ask for more business. Your business exists for your patients, and so does any healthcare practice. For them, you exist to help them serve their patients better. Have one thing in mind like free home visits or consultations that they can remember easily and pass along to a patient. Bring a newsletter with interesting, quality information, or leave behind a good article from a magazine you picked especially for them. You want to be the expert they think of when a patient comes in with unique problems not solved by your colleagues in the field.

Scientists Help Panda Find Love

by Yakub Qureshi in The Manchester Evening News

SCIENTISTS from Salford are helping a three-legged panda in China find love.Experts from the city's university are flying half-way round the world to fit the romance-starved bear with an artificial limb.

The panda, named Nui Nui, lost her paw in a fight and has been unable to feed or mate since.There are only an estimated 2,000 giant pandas remaining and zoologists around the world are working on a breeding programme to save them from extinction - but the species are famously reluctant to mate.

Dr Glyn Heath, an expert in animal prosthetics, and his team will travel to Beijing next month to create and fit a prosthetic and train the animal to use it. He said: "We will be performing a procedure which will transform Nui Nui's life and ensure that she is able to reproduce and nourish herself."We will only know the final design of the limb once Nui Nui has been clinically assessed. "However, we envisage that it will feature a hook or false thumb enabling her to grab bamboo from the trees for food.

"We will engineer the leg so that it will bear the animal's full body weight, allowing her to balance on all fours, while walking around and standing."Specialists at the School of Health Care Professions in Salford are rapidly gaining a reputation for being able to help stricken animals. Dr Heath trained to build prosthetics for humans, but has since created mini-chariots for disabled rats and false legs for injured dogs.Since Nui Nui lost her paw in a fight with three other pandas, she has been unable to grasp bamboo and keepers at the Shaanxi Province Rescue Centre have had to feed her by hand.

The animal has also been unable to walk or balance herself properly, making breeding all but impossible.Dr Heath has successfully fitted artificial limbs for animals that otherwise have been put down, but Nui Nui will be the first panda he has treated. He said: "I'm confident Nui Nui will take to her new leg - most dogs we've worked with have been able to walk almost immediately after we've fitted false limbs."It's rewarding to know we're playing a part in protecting such a beautiful species."

NPR Story about Medicare Fraud

I enjoyed listening to this NPR story yesterday afternoon on KWMU. As Greg Allen says, fraud in the medical equipment, prosthetics, and orthotics industry gives the rest of us a bad rap. I guess now we know how lawyers feel, right? Patients and their family members should always check to make sure they actually received the services their statements claim they received, and doctors should make sure they only sign for services they ordered.

Allied Healthcare Promotions Tip #3: Smile

Smile. When you visit medical offices to connect with your referral sources, make it your goal to brighten someone’s day just a little bit. You don’t have to be clever or get the place roaring in laughter, but if you’re grumpy over the traffic, because business is slow, or because no one will talk with you long, it will show. Small talk is under-rated, as long as you don’t waist anyone’s time. Be the one they enjoy to see walk in the door.

American Healthfront

P&O Care recently appeared in a segment of American Healthfront on St. Louis NBC affiliate KMOV4. The two minute segment features two of our prosthetists, Jon Wilson and Greg Doerr, as well as two of their patients, Denise and Sharon.