Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 28)

OPERATIONS TAKE THE LEAP “If you are scared to jump off a diving board, you’re never going to jump.” THE MYTH OF THE PAPERLESS PANACEA John Bonini, North Carolina Orthopaedic Clinic explains Shaikh. “We tried to plan the work flow as best we could, but until you go live… ” Initial wariness was a contributing factor. Shaikh admits that physicians and staffers at his practice weren’t completely conﬁdent about their new system when it was implemented. “When we ﬁrst started the project, we always generated some kind of paper because we wanted to have some redundancy,” he says. Once they felt sure of themselves and the new EMR, they shredded that temporary paper. Your practice can also expect to keep paper charts for a while after implementing an EMR. Although smaller practices might be able to scan all of their patient charts, larger and more established practices could ﬁnd that idea too time- and cost-prohibitive. That was certainly the case at Nassau Orthopedic Surgeons. Bonini knew the nine-physician practice had to come up with a plan for what it was going to do with its almost 4,000 square feet of patient charts before implementing its EMR. The solution was to scan active patient charts. Staff pulled charts for all patients that each physician would see within the next two months and then scanned those immediately. “When the doctor went live on his ﬁrst day with the EMR, he had no crutch and was totally paperless,” says Bonini. Then when return patients called to book appointments, their charts were pulled and scanned before they showed up at the ofﬁce. All scanned paper charts were archived, as New York state law requires medical practices to keep patient records for 28 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | TECHNOLOGY GUIDE seven years. At the end of each year, the practice shredded expired charts. Of course, that meant shrinking paper records at a slower rate, but by the end of the third year, only half of the ofﬁce’s paper charts were still there. The practice was ﬁnally able to get rid of itself of paper charts earlier this year. “They’re actually moving their physical therapy facility, which was in another building, into the space that was doing nothing but storing charts,” says Bonini. “They are freeing up $100,000 in rent and moving their facility into where their chart storage used to be. It’s amazing.” Check your state regulations for retaining medical records. Chances are that your practice is going to have some kind of paper — even if it’s just in storage — for a few years after you implement an EMR. If your practice is small enough or new enough, you could consider scanning all your patient charts, but don’t expect that to be a rapid process either. Springﬁeld Cardiology spent nearly nine months scanning in ﬁve years’ worth of charts for its three physicians. Everyone pretty is much saying the same thing: Forget about paper; think about being more efﬁcient. To that end, you may ﬁnd certain areas in which paper just can’t be excised from your practice — and that may not be such a bad thing. Many practices, for example, ﬁnd it difﬁcult to eliminate patient history summaries on paper. Physicians generally read a chart summary before entering the exam room so they can familiarize themselves with the patient’s history. One practice Moore dealt with had dispensed with that paper summary altogether. “The physician opened the door and literally did not know who was in there,” she says. “Talk about a problem with patient service.” But how will your practice’s patients react to a physician who goes directly to the exam room’s laptop before starting a conversation? To avoid problems like these, Springﬁeld Cardiology still prints “doctor data sheets” for its physicians. “As long as it doesn’t slow down the efficiency of the organization, I don’t have a problem with a temporary piece of paper and shredding it afterward,” says Shaikh. A number of EMRenabled practices also continue to print out their daily schedules. Even though work ﬂow may be coordinated through the EMR, the staff is accustomed to working from a paper schedule. “If that helps you and helps your work flow, you shouldn’t feel like you can’t print out that schedule because you’re not allowed to have paper,” says Moore. “The main objective is work ﬂow — not getting rid of paper.” WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

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