A practice built around people
Jeremy Lawson, DC, has been in practice for eight years and has worn just about every hat in the building. He has handled marketing, sales, patient care, front desk work, and everything in between.
Today, Catalyst Family Chiropractic sees around 200 patients a week with a seven-person, part-time team — all of whom started as patients themselves.
That matters to Dr. Lawson. His team already understands the culture of the practice and what it feels like to be on the patient side of the experience. It also gives patients someone at the front desk who can relate to what they are going through in a very real way.
The challenge
When the old EHR started creating more work
When Dr. Lawson first opened Catalyst, Jane worked well for what he needed. It was customizable, affordable, and gave him a place to start.
As the practice grew, though, more of the day-to-day work started happening around the software instead of within it.
Patients could receive text reminders, but they could not reply to them. If they needed to contact the office, they had to use a separate number. Family scheduling took multiple logins, and recurring payments still required Dr. Lawson or a team member to sit down on the 1st and 15th of every month and run cards individually.
Dr. Lawson put it pretty simply:
"It was a pain in the a**."
— Jeremy Lawson, DCThe solution
Finding an EHR that fit the way Catalyst worked
Dr. Lawson did his homework before making a switch.
He talked to friends in practice, looked at systems including Genesis, Platinum, and ChiroTouch, and compared what each platform would actually look like in his day-to-day workflow.
ChiroHD stood out because it felt practical, straightforward, and connected to the tools he already wanted to use.
"ChiroHD just made the most sense. It was the simplest — it had the fewest hurdles to jump through as far as patient implementation, following through with my notes process. It just seemed the simplest as far as practicality went."
— Jeremy Lawson, DCWith ChiroHD, Catalyst could keep SKED and connect it with other tools in the practice, including Cash Practice and Zapier. Communication became easier, recurring payments could run automatically, and the team no longer had to piece together as many separate workflows.
One app for the whole family
For a family-focused practice, one of the biggest improvements was scheduling.
With the old setup, a family of five could end up going through the booking process five separate times. With ChiroHD and SKED working together, one person can open the SKED app, add their family members, and book everyone in the same flow.
"Some patients are going to connect better talking to that mom at the front desk versus the doctor. Because they don't have to spend as much time on the administrative side of things, they can devote that time to their patients."
— Jeremy Lawson, DCIf someone needs a follow-up article, a resource they discussed during a visit, or a quick check-in, the team can pull up the patient and send it through SKED without jumping between systems.
Support that understood the practice
One experience in particular stuck with Dr. Lawson. ChiroHD sent a team member to Catalyst to see how the practice was actually using the software and where things could be made easier.
Because Catalyst is cash-based, Dr. Lawson had built some of his workflows differently than a more traditional insurance-based practice. Instead of telling him he was doing it wrong, the ChiroHD team took the time to understand why he had set things up that way — and even brought ideas back internally.
"They sent someone all the way out to Lake in the Hills, Illinois to come and see how this tiny office is learning how to use their software. It tells me that they actually care about the product they're putting out there."
— Jeremy Lawson, DC