Home Forums From Medical Economics-How to make a lot of $

? Electronic product creation


Jordan Shlain, MD
With the growth in technology, many doctors have undertaken the creation of products that make using EHRs, patient portals, and other communication systems easier for their colleagues and patients?some quite successfully. Jordan Shlain, MD, an internist and medical director at Current Health in San Francisco, founded HealthLoop in 2009 to facilitate regular monitoring of patient health via daily, automated emails.

Such efforts may even lead to a new career that uses your medical background.


Jonathan Bertman, MD, FAAFP
Jonathan Bertman, MD, FAAFP, a family physician in Rhode Island, developed the Amazing Charts EHR system out of frustration with cumbersome medical office management and record systems. "I was practicing family medicine in an underserved area of Rhode Island and simply was not able to make a decent living within the insurance reimbursement system. I wanted to go paperless, but all the EHR systems were too expensive," he says. "Once I finished programming my own EHR, I put it online, and another physician bought it. That's when I decided to start a software business, which eventually became my full-time occupation." Today, the company provides him with an income several times greater than what he would be making as a family physician, he says.

I read that too. Not sure if I was proud or disgusted.

My sentiments exactly

I would be proud. Just think if it read:

Today, the company provides him with an income comparable to what he made as a family physician.

JamesNT

Proud of Jon....disgusted with the health care system...if that's what you'd call what we are currently living with!

Until everyone realizes what is wrong with the health care system, they will continue to be disgusted.

JamesNT

Having to pay my IT guy $95 an hour to figure out problems with hardware/software running federally mandated garbage is part of the problem

That's a pretty high price. You should check out your local university/high school for a better price ha.

As I proposed a long time ago... The concept of Jon creating a "Two Track" two separate products like offering.
1) the CCHIT, Meaningless Use Monster that any and all EMR's MUST become to comply with all the CCHIT in CCHIT....

2) Keep polishing and adding truly Useful and user requested modest features in a more "Original" intent, concept and final product like our beloveded original AC was and still could be...

I mean if we could have a Non-CCHIT, Non-Meaningless Use version of today's modern AC with the "Last" E-Rx system that seemed to be working just fine in old 5.29 for example, many of the nicer things that folks actually like, the New encripted Back-Up, the soon to be released PM if one "Cares" to go into the Admin Features and "Activate It"....

I do not program and have NO IDEA how practical or fesable such a thing would be, and if it might be as simply as a few "Radio Buttons" in Admin to activate or de-activate "CCHIT" and "Meaningless Use" so as to save Jon and his team tons of money, effort and time.... so as to not have to re-invent the wheel each and every time for the two separate product lines, so most if not almost all code and programing could be almost one and the same.... But that would be my favorite and by far, First Preference in this crazy time in medicine...

I was just attempting to have an intelligent conversation with a local doc my wife and I simply love as a man and as a doc. He was about to do a minor procedure on her yesterday (and Yes Nancy is just fine... No major health problems or risks to worry about and thanks to one and all for any concerns and well wishes).

But imagine this... He is on the local HIT commitee here in Syracuse and yet he himself has yet to impliment an EMR system of his own.... And yet Rick is attempting to make me feel completely safe and OK with this "Wall" of No unnecessary access to charts by all of those we all should fear most.... And yet I "KNOW" for SURE, that I just read the CMS ruling on who can and will have access and like all previous BULLCCHIT since the time of 3rd party payments, the same bozos have access based upon the same CCHIT... So he is attempting to lay my concerns to rest while I KNOW I just read the "except for those needed to process the claims and look backs and all the other CCHIT" we are all too familiar with...

But here is a great example of my request that Jon seems to have gotten and implimented (I'm sure I was not the only one, although perhaps the loudest one...) where as one has to "Turn On" or turn off most of these most invassive features and connections... And it makes sense too because as a 50 state multi-region product AC needs to know which of the many state and regional systems it needs to "Hook-In" to and with.... So one would have to first activate it and then choose which one, one wants, needs her to connect and interface with....

So if any of you for Example want to go CCHIT and MU you can easily go in and turn it on and "Pick Your Posion".... while folks like Bert and Us here at Village Medical can leave that all "Dead" and "Turned Off" unactivated... Now you are and we are NOT.... And yet Jon didn't have to go thru too many Gymnastics to make this "Two Separate Paths or Products" like model and reality... We both download and install the same basic program in the same fashion and his staff only needs to know how to support one product with almost the same exact code and features.... and yet we the end users get to make our own personal choices based upon our own personal level of comfort, business, and ethical choices....

Paul

What I was trying to get across was that primary care docs are so low paid that my "new" job in Health IT pays more than my job as a family physician - which, it should not.

My point was that physicians and other providers work their assess off for paitents, worry about their diagnoses (or what we may have missed), strive to act responsibly, ethically, caringly - day in and day out (and afterhours too). The stress of being the primary care provider is real, signficant, and deserves reasonable compensation.

To get compensated less than a programmer, broker, plumber, etc., is not only unfair and unreasonable - it is frankly ludicrous. It seems so obvious that our society should value it's clinicians (and educators/teachers too, btw) moreso than valuing other sorts of jobs that don't, literally, make the difference between life and death?

Anyway, I was trying to be sardonic during the interview. That didn't come across. (The risk of doing interviews is that you can come across as an asshole.)

Oh well.

Most of us in practice may not be making the income we dreamed of, but our continued practice USUALLY provides a pretty steady income. For Jon to start up AC was a huge risk, I'm glad he took the leap, and risk should be rewarded. Thanks Jon,