EHR Rolled Out at University
If my grandmother, who I call Nanny J, was confronted with an electronic check-in system in her doctor's office, she most definitely wouldn't approve. This is the woman who actually laughed out loud when I suggested that, instead of snail mailing her a recipe for vegetarian lasagna, I e-mail it. She also flat out refuses to use the handy self check-out line at the grocery store, and when she's forced to, she's that person who just stands there with her groceries, waiting for the store employee to come over and bail her out. She does have quite the affinity for eBay, however.
It makes sense, though, that college and university health systems would be among the pioneers when it comes to patient-centric options like electronic check-in, online billing and appointment scheduling and e-mailed appointment reminders. The University Health Center at the University of Maryland recently rolled out a new system using Point and Click Solutions, a company I interviewed for a story late last year on technology in student health centers.
Students at the University of Maryland will soon be able to plan and follow up on visits via the Web, while the medical records staff will decrease paper and be more environmentally friendly, according to Dierdre Younger, assistant director for operations at the health center, as reported in the school's newspaper.
Back in my day (I graduated college 3 years ago), I remember that my school, a very small one, had a health center that operated with just paper charts, and I have a feeling they are probably not firing up an EHR any time soon, so I'm sure not every single college or university offers these kinds of services, but most of the larger ones do.
I e-mail countless times a day, make a beeline to the self check-out the grocery store and while I don't match Nanny J's eBay prowess, I am a huge fan of Etsy, so I look forward to the day when regular physicians' offices, like some of the tech-savvy school health center offices, offer little perks like letting me e-mail my doctor and schedule appointments online.