11/21/05
Randall Franks 

...Efficiency, information at your fingertips, an eye for detail and a chiropractor that doesn’t keep you waiting are all points of pride at Pray Chiropractic.

When a patient enters Charles Pray’s practice it is apparent that it is a port of activity as patients move from one treatment area to another, or wait in a small gathering of seats near the front door. Soothing instrumental music permeates the office.

If a patient has children with them, there is a small playroom just off the waiting area where young children can play as Noah and several of the animals from the ark smile down upon them from a colorful mural that features all of the colors of the rainbow.

The first in the nation

Pray strives to improve the patient’s experience by looking for technology to enhance the practice he began in Catoosa County 10 years ago.

His latest innovation is a new HCMI DCX direct digital chiropractic x-ray system.

“The new equipment provides better

diagnostic quality, instantaneous results, exposure time that is 50 percent less and the lowest radiation exposure you can get with an x-ray system,” he said. “That is twenty minutes out of their visit immediately.”

According to Jay McElhannon, HCMI vice president of chiropractic sales and marketing, Pray Chiropractic is the first practice in the country to have the system fully installed. HCMI of Springfield, Mo. manufactures digital and film x-ray equipment and chiropractic tables. “HCMI offers chiropractors the highest resolution digital images available in the profession,” he said.

Rob Bryce, HCMI regional sales manager, said the new technology is now more feasible for chiropractic clinics. “It is a brand new technology in the chiropractic market that has typically been cost prohibitive,” he said. “HCMI has been focused on bringing a solution to this market. It has been in use in hospital applications for quite some time.”

The old laborious process of putting a film cartridge in the x-ray machine, positioning the patient, measuring the patient, entering that information into the system, taking the shot and then taking the film cartridge out for four different x-rays is now a thing of the past.

“She’d (the x-ray technician) would stamp the film and then each film would take 90 seconds to process,” Pray said. “If it didn’t come out she wouldn’t know until it’s been processed.”

If there was a problem the patient would have to go through the process again, and according to Pray usually the problem resulted from motion blur when a patient moved slightly.

“But now (the technician) shoots it and in four seconds it shows up on the screen,” he said. “She can crop it, lighten it or darken it.

“(The technician) can do all types of different things with it to enhance the image and then if it does not come out the patient is right there and she can shoot it again,” he said. “There is no film and no processing.”

Once the images are in the system with a few clicks of a computer mouse the doctor can see the details on large screens in the exam areas.

“I can show patients their x-rays,” he said. “I can enlarge them, shrink them down, actually measure digitally the different areas in the spine.”

With his mouse he draws red lines across the image to highlight where there are problems and what areas need improvement.

“The system offers much better opportunities for documenting the patient’s progress,” he said.

Pray can then turn to another large display featuring an image of the human body with its nerve and bone structure depicted. With the touch of his finger he can show the patient how the deficiencies found in the x-ray are affecting their bodies.

Patient Gloria Black of Ringgold is enthusiastic about the new advancement.

“This high technology system is the best way to go for speed and simplicity,” she said. “I was able to see why I have pain right away.”

Ed Reisman of Ringgold said the new equipment is impressive. “With instant feedback we didn’t have to wait for results,” he said.

Pray said he has plans to make the x-rays available on CD, so patients can take them home and share them with their spouses.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” he said. “This is a huge benefit because of diagnostic quality and patient satisfaction because they get to see the x-ray very clearly on first visit.”

Courses of therapy

If the doctor suggests hydrotherapy as a treatment, two treatment tables are available where patients lay upon an almost flat blue rubbery surface where the therapist will start a powerful water pump forcing water up into specific areas of the table. But the patient does not get wet.

“It’s a water massage at high pressure,” Pray said. “It is pretty aggressive. We can isolate different body parts.”

Three therapy bays complete with ultrasound, electrical stimulation, vibration therapy and heat packs are also possible courses to enhance the healing process, Pray said. He said they also have cold laser therapy available which he describes as low level laser used to accelerate tissue growth.

“It is used extensively in plastic surgery, burn and sports injury centers,” he said.

Another treatment area features radio wave diathermy. “The Navy developed this in conjunction with NASA to keep their astronauts warm when up in space,” he said. “A lot of sports teams are using this to accelerate the healing of sports injuries, sprained ankles and knees.

“It introduces heat from inside out,” he said. “So it penetrates a little bit deeper than ultrasound. You can put it over the whole joint so it increases the heat inside the joint capsule itself.”
 

The practice

Five years ago he opened a new office on Battlefield Parkway in the Sentry Station shopping center.

Pray lives in Ringgold with his wife of 11 years Sabra. The couple have four children Carson, 10, Spencer, 8, Cole, 6, and Ruthie Grace, 17 months. They attend Oakwood Baptist Church in Chickamauga.

Originally from Epson, N.H., Pray graduated from University of South Florida with a bachelor of arts degree and from the Life University of Chiropractic in Marietta in 1993. He went into practice as an independent contractor in Rossville with Dr. Rosa Lee Wilson.

His patient list grew and he searched for ways to speed his ability to serve those patients, he said.

Pray looked to a New York architect who specialized in chiropractic care to design the flow of his office. “It came to a choice of stop accepting patients or make some structural changes,” he said. “It has decreased the waiting time to hardly anything.”

That approach and his able staff Tami Bratton, office manager; Tasha Holcomb, x-ray technician; Connie Dilbeck, therapy administrator and Stephanie Middlebrooks, insurance specialist, help him provide care to 100 patients a day. In just the span of 20 minutes on Nov. 10 the doctor gave full adjustments to five patients; from 7 –11 a.m. he had already assisted 50 patients.

“This practice is an anomaly,” he said. “The average practice with one doctor is seeing somewhere between 100-120 people each week. We are averaging about 100 per day.” Because of its system, Pray said his practice is set up to accept walk-in patients.

From the waiting room, one can see Dr. Pray moving between the adjustment areas as two unseen patients are lying face down on the adjustment tables. The sounds sometime glide over the wall as the doctor manipulates his fingers across the back making adjustments along the spine, with an occasional groan of relief coming from the other side of the wall.

Pray Chiropractic Charles G. Pray, D.C. Address: 2551 Battlefield Parkway, in Sentry Station Shopping Center near Goodys Phone: (706) 866-8273 Hours: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 7 a.m.-11 a.m. and 2 p.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday 7 a.m.-11a.m.Closed on Fridays. Website: www.praychiro.com