My Experience with EMR Software

When I came in to work today, I knew it was going to be a good day. It is the day our eye doctor decided he would go digital. You see, I work at as a secretary in an office of eye doctors. I have heard much news about electronic medical records and how they have helped many other medical practices become much nicer and run more efficiently. As a secretary, a big part of my job is making sure everybody's medical record is up to date and filed away properly. However, converting the office to use emr software would make my job much more enjoyable. The problem here, however, is that this is an office with 3 eye doctors and only one is willing to transfer his paper medical records to the software system.

We are going to give it a shot. My eye doctor, (meaning the one I work for) has another office where he works a couple days of the week. That office is a little smaller and they have already converted to using emr software, and they have had much success and are doing very well. This is one reason why he is so stubborn on converting to emr software, even when the other doctors in the office try to talk him out of it. The patients are also shared between the doctors many times, so this means that the others will be required to figure out how to use the system. Maybe when they do, they will be convinced that emr's can be a very good asset to their practice.

About 4 Weeks Later
Transferring all of our paper records into the new system has not been a very easy task. However, we are already beginning to see how the software is really going to speed things up around here. The other doctors are still critical of the new system, but even they have seen how it can be beneficial as well.

We have run in to one problem specific to our industry. Unless you have worked in an eye doctor's office before, you probably don't realize how big a chart can get for someone who has Glaucoma. Every patient with Glaucoma has to come in about every 5-6 months. Then we must perform two tests: an HRT and a visual field. Once we perform these two tests we need to print these tests off and normally both eyes are tested. That is a step that can't be overlooked, because one machine does not store the information and not even one of the machines has a connection with the computers we use. Therefore, after not so many years, our practice has tons and tons of information on each patient's chart.

We have a small scanner, so those thick charts take a chunk of time to get all scanned in. We could really use something designed for more volume. Then after we scan it in, we have to move each page one by one over to the program designed for our EMR's so the doctor has access to it when he needs it.

Two Months Later
Not too much time has passed and the process of converting our office to a digital format is almost done. I did not foresee when we started this venture, the problems that we would have, like our practice management software going down. We had to call for all the charts that we did not have because they were scanned. That does not happen too often thankfully, but those patients had an extra wait that day.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that we are the only practice attempting to do this. We are at a clinic with several other practices. We do not have the resources necessary to convert everyone to EMRs. We would need a better system and cooperation from everyone to start a venture like that so we could completely get rid of charts for good.

Even with these minor problems, transforming our practice from paper to electronic medical records has helped out significantly. We are using less and less paper and I can now spend much less time getting charts and other records ready for the appointments for the next day. Hopefully, when all of the doctors and staff get together for our next meeting, I can convince everyone to transform their office to an emr system. I really doubt that before too long, all of the medical practices will have emr software installed in their system.

Transfer your medical records from paper to digital the easy way using ChartLogic's user friendly emr software. Electronic Medical Records are easy to implement into your practice. Go now to ChartLogic.com to get your emr system today.