Starting to train

We had our first training session today, for four hours. They train 8 people at a time; we all had a computer in front of us, the trainer shows us things via a projector and then we practice. We had a mix of physicians and staff members. There was a very wide range of comfort with computers, from one "super-user" who had already been using the software in another office, to someone who had never used a mouse or email (and was not too thrilled about all this nonsense).

We learned to enter patient demographic data, and to use the scheduler. There are a lot more fields and screens than I am used to at the office, which is confusing at the beginning. I can access the training software over the internet, and I showed my husband what it looked like just now. I'm going to practice some more on my own over the next few days.

The server at the hospital is ready to go. All my colleagues' offices but one have been networked. I received a call today to confirm final data cut: this is when I give the trainer a copy of my practice's current demographic data, for transfer to the new system. This will be one week before our "go live" date; we will have to manually keep track of any changes (health card numbers, address changes etc) during that week. I will still keep my old computer for a while, as we will need to manually reenter the schedule, and will also have to reconcile bills that were submitted before the changeover.

We go back in one week for more training. The computers should come in in the next 10 days.

Michelle