Thanks all - what I am hearing is that there are a lot of ways to go about this. Perhaps having a desktop computer in each room for the M.A. to log in the patient's vitals and chief complaint. I'd love to say that I could trust our medical assistants to carry around a laptop or tablet, but there's a lot of hustle and bustle in our office and judging by how many times they've dropped the digital thermometer, don't think that's a good idea!
As I said before, there are four of us (the one of us is semi-retired) and we all have different "tastes". One likes the idea of a tablet, I prefer a net book/laptop, etc. the one thing we all have in common is that we are a lousy typists. I purchased Dragon nine medical, and I'm actually dictating this rather than typing it because it's much faster. I found a way (by using the command browser) to create templates for basic exams, like for sinusitis, bronchitis, that I can enter into AC by simply giving a brief command. The same goes for the plan for each of these. I just leave a space to fill in the antibiotic, if necessary.
I can see that Dragon isn't going to be for everyone but I think it'll work well for me.
It's good to hear that the hardwire setup is best; we do have a couple of IT people working for our partnership that I'm sure could help us out.
Melanie
