Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Switching to the new system for billing and scheduling

We are switching tomorrow. Actually, we've already switched. The computers got installed and configured yesterday, which took most of the day. The installer worked while patients were being greeted, checked in, and seen--somehow it was OK. Once this was done, we started re-entering patient appointments in the new scheduler software.

It is interesting being connected to the Internet. I actually did send an email link to the DASH diet while my patient was getting dressed; I was able to look up malaria prophylaxis on the CDC website for a patient going to the Philippines pretty quickly. I also got an email query from a patient, and I cut and pasted that into the "phone record" area in the EMR; that seems somewhat better than laboriously recording a phone conversation in my usual chicken scratch.

The tablet PC came today; I'll start using it everyday so I can get a good feel for it. It is about 3 lbs, which isn't too bad, since I'll be carrying it around all day.

My dedicated staff members stayed very late yesterday and today to make sure the schedule was completely transferred. We also started billing from the new system today; the government may get some odd bills. A card swipe arrived today, along with a label printer. Our project manager came by to make sure everything was OK. We get a trainer at the office for the morning, but I think we are comfortable with the basics.

We'll spend this month getting to know the administrative functions of the software. After March break, I go back for two sessions of EMR training.

Michelle

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