Home Forums Discussions General Discussion How to get my staff up to speed with the software?

Hello all
I installed the software and setup the network. (I have not purchased the software yet). I would like to set up a general training session for my staff on their routine daily tasks: new patient entry, scheduling, importing faxes, scanning, messaging, etc. The video tutorials don't cover all of that. Does AC provide that?
Thanks

I don't know that logistics will allow, but the most effective knowledge transfer would be to find a practice already using AC, and have some of their office staff(MA/Front Desk/Office Manager) come in for a morning or evening and help you walk through how you'll implement work and patient flow in your office.

If you find someone near enough to pull that off, reward them in whatever way works best for everyone, and I suspect you will come up to speed far faster than learning on your own.

Good thought. Will AC let me know which practices in my area use it?

I would hope so, but report back and let everyone know how it goes. There is another practice I know that is considering the same model, but doing it differently because of the logistics.

I am most interested in the results of this venture if u can indeed find an office nearby. from conversations with AC I am advsied they are working on a user's guide. we have been moving forward finding out as we go...fun but arduous.

AC did do an online session for us, and it was helpful, but it assumed we had done our homework and played with it some first. You can contact them and see what they will offer.

AC does great training over a video link with a live person showing you how to to everything and answering questions. We have really liked this and always learn a lot of new tricks etc. I think they will do as much as you ask. Our IT gut just calls and maked the arrnagem,ents then he sets up an audio/ video link (I think it us go to meeting or something like that) and turns the computer over to the presenter.

sry hope the typos are not too distracting.

I never knew about these sessions. That is awesome. I would combine it, as David pointed out, by playing with it first. It is still rather intuitive especially if you take immunizations and orders out of the mix temporarily. Play with it for a week, then maybe have everyone do one live patient a day. You can always do it on a fake patient and then write a real note as well. After, set up the demonstration. Great idea to do that.

@lfcook (not sure if you want me to post your real name)

You have to get back on Firefox.

Bert's suggestions sound great - some of us just turned on AC and did all of our notes on day 1.....it was a little more stressful. The one thing is that at some point you take the plunge and just go live....don't fiddle with just a note or two a day for too long.

I agree with Steven. Total immersion is the answer. It's painful, and the notes for the first few days are pretty bad, but it gets better quickly.

We started with the network up, (but nothing like it is now) and we tossed a fake patient around, (make an appointment, sign the patient in, vitals, send to the doctor etc, etc.) and it was remarkable how the staff figured out how to do their jobs. It is pretty intuitive, a few leaders emerged and it was impressive to see them take the initiative teaching the others.

I am actually getting together with my staff tonight to start using the software and import some of the existing paper charts. Tomorrow I have an online training session scheduled. I will see if AC will give me info of a nearby practice that uses the software.

Khaled,

It can also be helpful to designate an employee such as an MA to be a super user. For instance, my MA just picked it up and also likes to figure things out. She is able to help the others when they have questions.

Khaled, I might qualify my statement above about "total immersion". Although we did start using most of the features in AC right from the start, we did implement it in a few steps: first, we just played with it and made a couple of fake patients. Then we imported patient data and used it for a couple of weeks, but printed everything out. Then we trashed the data file ( with all our really worst mistakes,) reimported patient data, and went live. We learned a huge amount playing with fake patients (I still have Testpatient One through Five in the database for when I want to figure something out) and I not have to worry about hurting anything.)

I also agree with Bert's suggestion of finding someone else in the office to be "tier one" tech support. Our billing person is computer savvy and a huge help, as I have other uses for my time that dealing with computer issues. Five months into it, we still have minor computer issues from someone nearly daily, related to the operating system or the network.