Home Forums Discussions Problems Closing a practice

Time has come to close the doors of the practice. Been here 30 years. AC user for about the last 10 years. I have a Patient records guardian/custodian who is not an AC user. Plan on copying disks in PDF and having the custodian assume control of the records. I have a patient letter informing them of the closure and options for continuing care for the next 30 days and a list of potential Physicians to transfer care to, a release of info form to each patient, and the name an address of the "Records Custodian." I am curious about who else to contact besides my malpractice carrier. The state medical board and state controlled substance people will need to know. In addition to these, I'd like to ask anyone one who has been through this about any of the other details re: who else to contact, and what other surprises there might be. Thanks in advance.

Also, is there a way to make copying a patients record a one step process? Currently, it will send the clinical info to disk as a PDF, but not the imports. Thanks.

Amazing Chart portal, under add-on services, has listed a vendor called "Chart Capture". May be they have a service to put patient records into PDF that includes imports.

I would also be interested to see comments from others as this would be valuable info when our practice also goes through this phase.


aramiz
Houston TX

We have a specialized tool that outputs a combined patient chart and a folder containing all of the imported items.

It can be run one time to do all patients in your AC database.

We could modify that output to turn that into one enormous PDF if that is really what you want.

Drop me a line if you want to talk further.

Thanks Indy. I am not sure a want a large PDF of all my patients in one file. I would like easiest way to copy the files/export/or what ever that would include the entire chart including the imports in each record. I have a Physician practice that has agreed to act as custodian and I would like to make the process of retrieving individual records as easy as possible. Your special tool sounds like it would certainly reduce some steps. I would also like to make the process of copying the total record to disk as easy as possible. Thank you for the response.

Hi Tom,

I am so jealous of you. Congrats! I suppose you shouldn't have asked about the records as you didn't get any responses on how to close down/notifications, etc. Must be a book on the subject. I would think your local medical society or association would have one for Iowa.

As to the easiest way to copying the records, I guess you mean copying to disk as putting all the pdfs on one large disk, then copying from there. That should be pretty easy with so many large hard drives. Just need some backups.

As to CDs, you can burn them, but someone on here once mentioned how cheap you can get a ton of USB drives that are as cheap as the CDs if you buy a ton of them. Well, they can't be as cheap, but....

You can even get your office info as well as your home phone number. J/K on that one.

Thanks Bert! Don't be too jealous, there is always more to the story. Good news is that the closure is not due to a health concern, or a legal concern. I can honestly say that I never considered putting my personal phone number in each record! No matter, it is in the phone book in our small community. I appreciate your help on the board over the past 10 years or so.

I've had many thoughts on retirement (in the distant future) after seeing doctors trying hard to see their practices and failing. I have every intention of gradually replacing myself when that time comes, so the practice continues, the patients are taken care of, I have no charts to maintain, and I can continue to get rental income from my office building in retirement. I know that's not practical for everyone, and sometimes life necessitates pulling the plug.

That sounds like such great relief to be free of the thousands of responsibilities for you. We are sad to see you go and wish you the best of luck.