Jon,
That's an even better idea. I had the same feelings of not putting more work on my front office person as she is already checking in the new patients (i.e. scanning in drivers license, insurance cards, verifying all demographics, collecting co-pays, obtaining their weight, and rooming them). F/U patients she just grabs the already printed superbill and rooms the patient. I know it doesn't take much time to open a chart and forward it to me but it is another step to slow down clinic. Plus, like Jon says, she may forget and then the patient may never get a note.
I have a tablet PC that I don't use as much as I thought I would to finish charts as I go. I mainly use it to open CT scans and X-rays to show patients and pull data from the hospital. So I will take it upon myself to open the patients chart and hit Ctrl-S when their heading out the door.
All of these work-arounds could be fixed with a better scheduler in my opinion. I just want the front desk to be able to check a box next to the patient's name when they check in (this should change the color of the patient and document time checked in), and then, when the note has been signed on the patient, it changes to a different color so you know they checked in and that you finished the note. Nothing major as the current scheduler is very easy to use. It just needs to track the patient's progress through the encounter better (and only show the patient once for a 30 minute visit instead of 3 times...I have 10minute blocks)
v5 has all of this health maintenance crap that I will NEVER use. There was a reason it was called CSHIT. Wasted Jon's time so it could be certified and didnt' provide much help to the physicians who use it everyday. Hopefully some of you guys can use some of the new stuff added to AC. I doubt anyone outside of primary care will ever use any of it.
Sorry for the rant.
