Fellows...take the plunge! As someone who practiced medicine without a computer for over 15 years and then printed out notes for almost 5 years, it has been very nice to move towards being completely paperless. I now scan in everything and am about 3/4 finished scanning in old charts. Once I got used to not flipping through paper charts, I now love having the imported items categorized and right in front of me and am ticked off when I do have to get the paper chart and thumb through it. I complete every note in the room in front of the patient and, by the time they make it to the check out desk, their scripts have been faxed or printed, their instructions printed and their appointments and tests are already being processed by the front desk. The patients are impressed with my apparent efficiency!
No matter what the EMR situation will end up being, your data will be in an easily transmittable form. Which brings up another point. No more dragging out the paper chart, sifting through reports or notes that I want faxed to consultants. Simply "print" the scanned report to the fax machine and it is on its way. For patients who desire their records be transferred, a nifty little program called PDF Direct (free) can collate everything in their chart, give you a page count and burn it to a CD.
So, in summary, I highly recommend you move quickly to paperless. You know you will have to do it in some form or another in the very near future...may as well do it while you are getting used to the magic of AC! Just make sure you have several back up plans/methods.
Leslie
