Successful entrepreneurs are flexible, savvy, and choose great tools. Buddy Touchinsky began working with Practice Better as a solo chiropractor looking to expand his functional medicine practice, and run virtual health coaching programs. He eventually integrated traditional healthcare into his practice and launched PEAK, a full-service family medical practice with a growing team of practitioners. Could he do all this using Practice Better?
Buddy assumed the traditional medical providers on his team would need a medically focused EHR, so he researched several of them and fully set up two. But these other EHRs just couldn’t solve all the problems Practice Better did with group programs, food & mood journals, and direct client communication. Buddy and his team are now thriving using Practice Better.
We dug into why he chose Practice Better at each stage, how it saved his business during the pandemic, and when he realized he just couldn’t walk away.
Buddy Touchinsky is a chiropractor, Functional Medicine Practitioner, and Founder/CEO of PEAK Integrative Medicine. PEAK blends conventional medicine with alternative therapies, and has been providing direct primary care and health services in Central Pennsylvania since 2023.
Launched 18 years into Buddy’s practice journey, PEAK is an evolution and expansion of his chiropractic and functional medicine work. PEAK’s full-service medical practice includes Physician Dr. Liana Rodriguez, several Nurse Practitioners, a second Chiropractor, and a Health Coach.
His primary goal is to support his growing team, while continuing to provide breakthrough health care for his clients.
During the pandemic, Buddy partnered with a health coach to launch a virtual health coaching program. He found Practice Better was the perfect platform for managing programs and building out the virtual side of his practice.
His clients got great results but they weren’t keeping up with their routine medical care. They’d lost trust in the medical system. He saw the chance to expand his team, launch a brick-and-mortar functional family practice, and maintain virtual services – even for local customers.
The traditional medical providers joining PEAK found Practice Better useful, but they were accustomed to labs and prescriptions that import and export both ways directly from the EHR. To accommodate the new medical team, Buddy researched EHRs and invested time into fully setting one up. That just didn’t work, so they tried another.
The cost of leaving Practice Better was too high. They lost what made the business work so well. They couldn’t deliver the same remarkable service while staying efficient and organized. It’s much easier to just pull labs and prescriptions in and out of Practice Better.
“I wanted as much as possible in one app. (PEAK relies on) group program management, regular information updates, and a patient portal for communication, file sharing, photo sharing, and food diary logging. We … drip out client support and education on a regular basis.”
Buddy Touchinsky, DC, CFMP
The generic medical intake forms in most EHRs were missing key questions, creating more work on the back end to patch things together. PEAK’s customized intake form questions map right into client notes for easy access. This saves practitioners from spending too much time looking at the computer rather than interacting with the patient.
It's customizations like these that helps practitioners like Buddy work more quickly while preventing mistakes. Clients don’t have to tell their story over and over again — it’s on record where practitioners can see it. This personalizes their experience and unlocks better health outcomes. Clients can easily communicate and share files with their healthcare team using the portal and messaging. Essential information stays right where the team can see and act on it.
Because it’s so modifiable, PEAK can build and maintain programs that help their clients thrive. Client tags are powerful tools for identifying the people most interested in new content when PEAK launches new programs.
“Practice Better is infinitely adjustable and modifiable to what we need. We love the patient portals and using programs to upload all of the content to our education programs and have them available all in one app. Once we’ve set up a protocol, it’s all there to send to any client. “It’s all very workable, it keeps us organized.”
Buddy Touchinsky, DC, CFMP
Here are Buddy's tips for keeping your team organized and efficient in Practice Better:
Secure Messaging – "Group messages keep everyone on our team in the loop and make it simple for practitioners to review client conversations to align on client care."
Tasks – "We assign tasks to clients, throwing the ball into their court and encouraging accountability."
Tags – "As a team, we use tags to help us stay organized. We can easily identify patient conditions, treatments, programs, and other special considerations. This also helps segment who to contact when a new program launches or a new treatment is offered."
Scheduling – "Team scheduling, viewing everyone's availability, and two-way integration with our calendars has really been convenient and improved our team efficiencies."
Forms – “Automating client forms has really streamlined our work. All of our form questions map right into our client notes, too, for easy access."
Notes & Charting – "From the client's perspective, the ability to share notes between practitioners really supports their success and enhances their experience. Everyone on our team has access to each other's notes.' The protocols are really great because they can create one and share it across the board."
Programs – "Online group programs are very efficient for us because we can connect with people from all around the world and different states, but also see 20 - 30 people in one group coaching session.
Practice Better made a lot of that possible because it organized the group chats, content modules, and registrations. We could meet our clients virtually and manage their care all in one place."
“Try out Practice Better! From a team perspective with multiple providers ... you won’t get any more cost-effective than Practice Better. This system has all the features you could need, with the ability to automate so many tasks. It's like a one-stop shop. This is as close as I've found to the ideal digital health record system out there, and I've tested quite a few ... only to realize they didn't work nearly as well and always returned to Practice Better.”
Buddy Touchinsky, DC, CFMP
Ready to support your growing practice? Find out how Practice Better can help you succeed like Buddy by talking to a Practice Better team member today.
