Bento

Piedmont Avenue Clinic: Founder Prescribes Bento for Tracking Contacts and Logging Cases

Daniel Donner L.Ac.
HMC, CCH, Dip. Ac.
piedmontaveclinic.com

Bento can be good for your health, especially when you’re a patient at Piedmont Avenue Clinic in Oakland, California. Daniel Donner, the clinic’s founder and seasoned alternative health practitioner, organizes important information with Bento synched to Mac OS X Address Book and iCal. ”I use Bento to track my marketing contacts and efforts, and log all the workers compensation cases I deal with,“ he says. ”Bento is just easy. My assistant and I were able to set it up without any help and I use it on an almost daily basis. It has helped things run more smoothly here at the clinic and I could definitely see myself using it for other projects in the future.“

Channeling Energy

Donner’s passion for alternative medicine grew out of, of all things, stage lighting. He worked behind the scenes as a lighting tech during high school and later studied stage lighting at Carnege Mellon. Through the years, he noticed the peculiar effect his lights had on the actors. ”I have always been very interested in energy,“ he says. ”When I worked in stage lighting I became impressed with the affects of light and energy sources on people. That eventually led me to the study of homeopathic medicine and other modalities.“

That study sent his career spinning. He left the stage lights behind in favor of a more direct relationship with energy. ”I knew that I wanted to apply what I was learning about energy to help people,“ he says. ”The closest thing was acupuncture and Chinese Medicine—they’re both really energy medicine. So I started taking the medical courses I would need to do acupuncture and treat patients.“

He later studied acupuncture at the San Francisco College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. In 1987 he earned his acupuncture license and officially began seeing patients a short while later. Today he’s the chief acupuncturist and homeopathic clinician at his clinic. He treats patients suffering from everything from arthritis to food allergies to anxiety using acupuncture, deep tissue massage, homeopathic treatments and herbal therapy. ”I treat people who suffer from sugar imbalances, insomnia, carpal tunnel, leg cramping, psychological disorders—many different ailments,“ he says. ”And I keep records about all my patients to track treatments and therapies with FileMaker Pro and Bento.“

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