Himada, I am certainly new to AC myself, we went live in April and we are trying to schedule a few less patients because of all the chaos, but the system is faster than paper, it is chaos in the rest of the office that is an issue. As a neophyte I still spoke for an hour at the state conference in Sept. and they have asked me to speak for two (long winded?) hours in February. While I am challenged by the computer issues I have begun to get a grip on the whole EHR and I am shocked how much I missed the point getting started. I would like to offer you some tips to help get started.
- Consider setting up a scanner to deal with old charts, and then shred them. The Cannon DR6080 turned out to be overkill, but we have scanned and shreded thousands of charts! The scanner came with software called 'Capture Perfect' and we love it. It stores the recordes on the server and leaves Amazing Charts un polluted by all of these old and useless records. They are INFINITELY more available than they ever were in the storage unit and any page needed can be output to Amazing Charts if needed. In California the old records now have to be saved for TEN YEARS and the storage costs are enormous, but don't worry about scanning in the chart right this minute. Go in the room with both the paper chart and the EHR. You MUST get the basic data in the EHR, (problem list, allergies, med list, DIAGNOSES) and eventually you will want to do them on the weekend or evening before. After a few months you will have days where most patients are already in, and you will be in heaven. TREAT THE BULK OF THE OLD CHART EXACTLY AS YOU WOULD THE FIRST VOLUME OF COMPLEX CASE, (geriatrics it is common for multivolume charts, Peds probably not?) Or you may think of it as the old records from another Dr. Glean out just what you need and enter it NOT AS A PICURE OF PAGE but as real useful data entered into fields. Carry the chart as a security blanket as long as you like, but then scan it to the server and shred it!
- What is so important to understand is that the EHR is a tool for the practice of medicine NO LESS THAN YOUR STETHOSCOPE and it is a database you are building. What matters is what goes forward from now, not the old records, (paper under glass) that you scan in. The real impact of the EHR will be felt by your patients in the years to come as we all strive to achieve the 'Medical Home Model' practice that promises to revitalize heath care.
- The world is not paperless, and your practice is not likely to be any time soon. Don't stress about it. (For two months while we tried to figure out the computer issues we took Faxes from one server, printed them, scanned them into AC and then shredded the paper. Stupid, but still WAY FASTER than anything we have ever done before. Give your staff enough tools, we have 9 points in the office where material can be scanned in and plan to buy two more right away, ( the staff fight over the little Cannon 2050C) but guess what. Our first thing we used AC for was storing the new labs, x-ray, consults and so forth, and within a month we settled into a rhythm where ALL FILING IS FINISHED BY 5:00 PM EVERY SINGLE DAY. Awesome, you can't believe the time that is freed up when paper is handled just once, then shredded and removed from the work flow forever. Can you guess howmany times a month I use to leave the room and wait while two or three employees would stop what they were doing to look for a report or call the lab to send us yet ANOTHER copy that would need to be filed? Why did we do this for so long?
- Most important tip I tell everyone, DON'T WAIT. You may someday know enough to pick a software that is better suited to your practice than Amazing Charts, but you will still be WAY BETTER OFF if you start now. We chose Amazing Charts fulling expecting that we would want to switch in one to two years, but we were unwilling to commit to the pricetag of the overpriced ones until we were more clear on what we need. Now that we are using it, and at the rate Bert keeps improving it, I can't imagine changing. It is awesome. Do what we did, just use it for the filing for the first month, and put the original paper in a box without shredding it. Once we got it going we knew right away, I would slit my wrists, rather than go back.
