I'm getting the picture that there is nothing unique about my situation -- and given the fact that if we live long enough, we will get too old to keep practicing medicine! I previously thought that being a doctor, I could escape that fate -- but guess what? NOT.

The next best thing is to age gracefully and quit in time --dying in one's boots sounds idyllic -- but it isn't fair to the patients if you do it on purpose. (like that morbid joke about my grandfather dying peacefully while the other people in the car were screaming). These days no one wants to step into an existing practice, so at some point there has to be an arbitrary decision to close the practice.

Here's where Amazing Charts shines: we own the data, and the program will continue working even if we don't pay any more to AC when the office closes. 12 years of records will back up on a thumb drive and can be accessed even if the server fails -- so maintaining custody of records is relatively easy compared with maintaing custody of all the paper charts. (we so far have paid over$1500 to shred the last 7 years of paper records -- one of the practice partners refused to deal with EHR, so we had duplicate paper records) and probably are looking at another $500 or so before we are done.) I don't think that very many other EHR's out there have that flexibility of dealing with historical records.