One of the reasons our office runs so well is that the patients fill in a lot of their information themselves. In my search for electronic medical records system, so far no one is really set up for that. That would mean that we might move even slower if we adopt the systems. Hmm…I may need to rethink this.
Also, the expert Mark Bean with the business in Florida, it appears has sold his business, and I have no way to find him.
On the other hand, Shawn Barret from Ability Software in Vegas, emailed me right back, eager to help.
I still have been unable to get one of the EMR software demos to run on my computer. It is my brand new Lenovo, so I do not think it is the computer. I turned off my firewall. I think it must be a software problem, but I am not sure. I have sure learned though that a good demo, easy to downlod, is a quick way to sell software.
I also bought the 290 page report from the AC Group and I am glad I did. It was very comprehensive, and I still have more to read. It costs $129. I learned a ton from the report, and recommend it to anyone looking into EMR. I also spoke to Mark Anderson on the phone today, the CEO of the AC Group. Mark said that for a small chiropractic office that the combination of Medisoft and SpringCharts was a good match. He is the only one I have spoken to or heard about so far, that really has an overview of all or most of the softwares. It is a full time job to keep up on all of them.
I am getting the feeling that by simply using technology I allready know, such as Medisoft, excell, word, and windows, and simplifying my paperwork even more, I still may be able to have a system that is faster than the other softwares. I don’t think this is true for most practices though. Our practice, and everything about it, is so extremely simple and refined that it blows most M.D.’s and other chiropractors away when they see it.
It is absolutely top quality health care, I think the best you will get anywhere for what we do, done very, very efficently.
Our next step is to switch over to the new Medisoft. I would like to do that next week. This week we will catch up on all of our Accounts Recievable work, and then get the new software set up.
An important lesson I learned last time we updated software was as follows. The new system will have problems. We will probably have to take it down, and reinstall it a few times before it is all working right. The only way to do this in a working office, is simply to run the old system on one machine, while we install the new system on another machine. Then when the new system has proved itself for a few weeks, then we shut down the old system. 6 years ago when we let someone else take over our billing for a while without keeping our old system in place, it almost cost me the entire practice.
So this time we will do it like the airlines. We will keep our perfect system running. Then we will have a second system set up and running in parallel. Then we will turn off the old system. It just means we will do double work for a few weeks. The staff and I are used to working hard. We might as well just work a little harder!!
It is good to read about other docs and know that they go through the same stuff no matter what their size or situation. We are going to have to upgrade our office software and I just cannot weed through all the options. I want to do something web-based…I think. I would like to go paperless. Any other advice from San Diego? I like to think you guys are always at least one step ahead of the eastern world.
Dr. Rebecca
Louisville, KY
Dr. Rebecca,
I see your point on the web based software. At first it sounds like a great idea, because you get so much of it off of your plate.
After investigating it more, I decided against it simply because if the internet connection won’t work while a patient is standing in front of me, I can not schedule them, enter their charges or do anything.
God forbid the company hosting the site goes off line for some reason such as a hurricane, or a fire, what to do then?
If we back up our software regularly, then if we lose our office, we can go to Office Depot, buy a computer, install the software, and probably be up and running within 24 hours if not 12 hours.
Make sure to keep reading all of the blogs I have written and will write on this subject, as I am learning a ton! Also check out emrupdate(dot)com, as there are a lot of experts there.
dk