Mike,
You bring up interesting counterpoints and some seem they may be valid. I wonder if a patient signs a release when they go into a hospital that their demographics (name) will be on a computer that other caregivers may see. Do you tell your patients that Drs. B and C. can see that that they are in your practice. It depends somewhat what your practice is.
Apologize on the search. I guess if you are signed in under your name, you only see those patients? My nurse today brought up the very same patients under her sign-in as I did. Help me out here?
The charts are "mixed together." If, you have a John Aardvark, and she has a Jim Aarrdvark, both charts will be mixed in the same databases. And, there was an entire thread on how someone was going to take a database and take patients out.
Other interesting notes that they should think of. Maybe I am not thinking it through.
1. Entire threads have been devoted to can we delete a note on the wrong person. Answer no. But, at least it is on my patient. What if you chart on the other doctor's patient? You can use an addendum, but that patient who isn't in your practice has a note that was based on a patient from a different practice.
2. Can you do Prescription renewals and Prescription status? I suppose you could choose not to use it. Again, I am just asking.
When you create a search/report for patients of a specific doctor in AC you need to add a search criteria for preferred physician (it is in the demographics section of AC).
Not to get too philosophical but the meaning if "mixed together" needs to be looked at. I am not sure how sharing a database means charts are mixed together. If the charts can be accessed as individual charts and when you access them you only see one at a time, it doesn't seem like they are mixed together in any meaningful sense. The reality of sharing an office with another doc (or practicing medicine in any setting) is that there are lots of opportunities for HIPAA violations - I don't think using the same installation of AC has changed this in the least compared to how it was when my office associate and I both used paper charts. If the standard of practice was that we had to stamp out all POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES to violate HIPAA we would all be paralyzed.
Documenting in the wrong patient's chart is a problem regardless of who does the documenting. I wish AC would allow us to fix this problem.
Prescription renewals has a "Show mine only" button in the upper right corner so I only have to see my own patient's prescription renewals.
The issue of separation of practices some day might be a hassle. Worst case scenario we each take a copy of the database and just inactivate each other's patients I suppose. Not sure if it would be possible to actually purge all of her patients from the Database - I would have to ask AC for help on this if it ever happened.
