For us, UpDox is the real upside of going electronic. The problem is it were to import automatically would be that the provider might miss seeing something. Also there are 4 of us in the office, and the front office person has to send the fax to the right person for review. We do this by assigning a different color tab to each provider, and then filtering for that color.
We are getting our feet wet with the scheduler. It seems to work fine, but we are a bit nervous about implementing fully as patients often don't know what kind of appointment they need... they think it is a brief appointment for a prescription refill, for example, whereas we write prescriptions for one year and if a refill is needed an annual exam is due. So we have a limited number of online slots available for acute problems. The appointment reminder works well, and patients do appreciate this. Also, the online payment option is used regularly, and has helped cash flow quite a bit.
We started with the portal from day one. The information flow we have developed is very clean. Patients love it.
Todd, what you have said is totally true... It echoes my observation that going electronic has NOT saved any time or made me more efficient, as I am now personally having to do a bunch more clerical tasks than with paper. Example: used to go to inbox, pick up lab slip, initial, put in outbox. Now it is import, review, send to portal with note, add note to lab, sign off. However, I have to (grudgingly) admit that I am missing fewer things than I used to by being forced to attend to each thing personally.
