Hi Bert,
I am very appreciative for your input and promise to keep an open mind on this issue.
Currently, I print out an Rx at the end of our patient visit and hand it to the patient. This does have the advantage of allowing the patient to comment (e.g. "You do realize that I am allergic to penicillin, doctor?" etc.). It also gives me the opportunity to tell them that I have written the Rx from the Wal-Mart or Target $4 list; it seems that most of my patients go to Walgreens and I do not want to make them uncomfortable (think that they are going to hurt my feelings if the do not allow me to fax their Rx to Wal-Mart) if they still want to go to their current pharmacy rather than fight the crowds at Wal-Mart.
Currently, I have laptops in my exam rooms with scanner/copier/printers in each room as well. None of my computers are connected to the Internet or to a phone line, but I guess I could run phone lines into each room. I would also have to insert the various pharmacies into my AC to allow me to fax from the patient room. All of this is doable, but, I will admit that it is rather user friendly for my situation at present to just have my receptionist fax the Rx for me (she always also hands the hard copy to the patient in case the pharmacy claims they did not receive a fax from us).
I will tell you that I have finally taken your advice and stopped Dragon and now complete my charts at each visit (templates help a great deal). I still forward the chart to myself for proofing later and I still print a hard copy for the chart, but I anticipate that this will go away soon. I am coming along slowly; thirty years of habits are difficult to change, but you are winning me over. I do also back up my charts daily with an external hard drive and a flash drive; I leave the external drive in my desk drawer and take the flash drive home every evening and download it into my home computer for reference if I receive a call from a patient at home; it works great. Your advice and Brian's have been invaluable in accelerating my learning curve on AC and has increased my experience with AC immeasurably!
Please check out the posts on the Wish List concerning the possibility of an AC conference; we would love to have your thoughts on the topic. It would be great to meet you face to face and the expertise you would add would be immense.
Best,
Jim
