The Joys of EMR
This past month we have been working toward dragging our office into the 21
st century. As I have mentioned in the past, the state of Minnesota required all healthcare providers to have electronic billing by July 15, 2009. In addition, EMR is an essential component to healthcare home designation. Hence, July and August have been somewhat more chaotic than usual.
In July, we were able to register for the "free" electronic billing option offered by the State of Minnesota. It works very well but requires us to double key all data, first in our practice management system then in the billing system. Someday we will be able to have a system that does both, but for now, free is good. Our EMR is also free and online. The advantage of an online system is that the data is stored off site so daily backup runs are not necessary. A second advantage is that clinicians can access the records from home as well as the office.
The first week we had EMR (August 1) we just entered the demographics and continued with paper charts. The next week we had all new patients on the EMR system and the old patients with paper charts and entering the newer notes in the system. That actually took us a couple of weeks to do.
At the end of last week we started scanning in documents from the old record. This looks like a bit of a challenge, especially with my special needs kids who have care plans updated every 60 days.
All in all, the front staff is excited about the move toward electronics, but the provider staff has their concerns. It's a bit cumbersome and can be uniquely tailored to the individual provider but not the practice as a whole. I have yet to discover all that it can do, so this may be a feature that I haven't found. For those of you who are of my generation and my computer comfort level, the support both online and via phone calls, is excellent!!
In the future we hope to have an EMR, billing and practice management system that is fully integrated and will communicate well with the outside world (hospitals, specialists, etc.). For now, it will take extra work on our part to manage the separate systems.
I shared with our patients the "exciting" news of our EMR. The response is mixed. Some see it as a step toward the future while others see it as a loss of our "small town" image. We will just have to keep serving tea!