Into my second week with the one exam room decked out with the big screen TV, and driving my nurse crazy. It started out this week with my bright idea of doing another practice wide broadcast with the Updox portal, which leads to increase busy work for my nurse. I am trying to avoid seeing patients in the exam room without the TV, so my nurse is having to room about half my patients twice, but the significant improvement in efficiency with engaging the patient with their chart open and going over trends with labs, weights, BMI's, BP's, medication reconciliation has been much better received than I ever anticipated.
I have had several patients or relatives of patients in the health care sector rave about the setup, and have felt a strange transposition of the patient doctor relationship. It's a bit like working on a school project together, a bit hard to describe, but being able to visually see the chart and help create, mold, and interpret it together, really engages the patient in a way I have never experienced before.
I was a bit skeptical thinking this may be a bit of a flop, but AC graphs and the Quest HL7 imported graphs of labs display quite well, and when the med list is expanded, extremely easy to read.
The e-prescribing with the drug interaction checker has been an unexpected hit, and the printer use has significantly declined.
Bottom line, I am definitely encouraging my partners to consider a similar setup.
