Home Forums Discussions General Discussion moving more towards paperless meeting!

Wow! I had read and learned from the experience of others and how to make this move towards a paperless office, with ones current staff. I had a plan. We were moving in slow and steady steps, We were not trying to climb the mountain (mastering it all) in one day, or one week, or one month! I had prepared this 6 month plan. initially addessing orders and e-prescribing, then data entry by the staff of CC, HCC, ALLERGIES and Meds, Scanning pertinent chart info as we went, retaining the paper charts, everyone has a new computer, good scanner, networked printers. We had been using AC for office visits for 2-3 years. I have been doing brief "team" building meetings, sharing tips as we learn them from the forum and from each other. Daily debriefings. Well suffice i to say that my risk for prostate cancer has gone down dramatically as the staff went through a mass verbal catharsis, verbally performing an orchiectomy on me. It seems that it has been more stressful than I anticipated for the staff. Fortunately, they are all good people. It just seems that they had this idea that we could phase in the nearly paperless EMR by 2015....Not October 2011. In the end, after several kleenex boxes, and a lot of chocolate, they are speaking to me again. They actually were somewhat consolling towards the end of the day, and did remind me, and themselves, that I did own the store, and that I have never deliberatly tried to bury them with needless work. But what a reminder about how we people don't like change. Thanks for letting me unload. If I had a donkey, I'm sure it would still love me.

I feel your pain. We took took the "jump off a cliff" approach, and started doing pretty much everything. Our team building meeting stressed " if you plan a career in the medical field after this office, the electronic record will be part of it. Best you learn now when nobody knows what they are doing and we can all cry together."

It was bloody awful for months. It is substantially better now.

Tom, I have shipped one of my favorite donkeys, Denali, to you. She prefers chewing tobacco over chocolate (both equally costly). Just scratch her on the behind and she will do anything you ask.

Seriously, do not worry. In another month or so your staff will wonder how in the world they ever managed to do things the papered way. I had to literally yank the schedule book from my receptionist and hide it. Now they love not having to use it. I had to clean out paper charts and get them out of the front office so the staff would not depend on them for info, such as demographics, allergies, insurance cards. This made them have to enter the info into AC, scan cards, ask patients questions. Now that the info is all right in front of their noses, they love it. No more searching through paper charts. They also love the fact that I complete most all of the orders in the room, take care of the scripts, and have an assessment and plan they can look at before the patient gets to the check out desk. So, hang in there. Your staff will still love you (and you won't have to scratch their butts),

Leslie: do you spend a lot of time typing up the A &P in the room before leaving? Fortunately, I have never known anything but electronic charts. The move to a paperless office completed the model and seems so much more efficient. Now I just wish he rest of the world (pharmacies, imaging, etc) would catch up to us. Yeah, the DEA wants the Ambien faxed because it is so much more 'secure' - as patients somehow would have the ability to hack Surescripts but would not know how to send a fax (with plenty of whiteout and changes) from some UPS store. And I just love handing the patient a hard copy script with my DEA number and signature for them to import into photoshop.... ;(

My charts are all completed before I leave the room...orders, scripts, etc. With the help of templates and ShortKeys most of the time my staff has the chart signed and in front of them before the patient gets to the front desk.

I remember going from download on a Friday and "live" on a Monday. The staff walked into the program.

BUT THIS WAS WITH VERSION 2. Much easier program to learn.

@ Chris: The key, as Leslie says, is to get your chart done in the room.

I agree with you completely on the ePrescribe and narcotics.

They have it completely backwards:

-- handing a script on paper to someone with DEA# and signature is like handing the Vicodin to them. Before version 4, there was no process to go through for validation on AC. So, anyone, using x@x.com could download AC, print a script, and forge your name.

-- calling in a script. Wow, they get the MAs name sometimes. Nuff said.

-- fax: again download AC (in the past), set the fax machine for the fax's number of my office and off you go.

-- ePrescribe (definitely the safest) I tried Provigil and Sonata last week, and, ding, error message.

Personally, I don't care that much about drug diversion. Why should 98% of the good patients be punished for the other 2%. The online record of what patients are filling what where is more helpful. And, if they let the pharmacies link to each computer system so the drug would pop up that would go a long way.

OK, so a controlled substance should require a password. Fine. But, that should suffice. Make one change it every month. Even if a patient stole it, they would have a month to try and use your ePrescribe.