Practice Partner EMR Review
George Wilson, MD has been a family physician since 1963 and is practicing in Rancho Mirage, CA at Eisenhower Medical Center. He switched from paper charts to Practice Partner (Medisoft Clinical) EMR in 2009.
The ability to recall data is the biggest asset of EMR. Before EMR Dr. Wilson would have to take charts home after hours- now with EMR he doesn't have to do that. Patients can access reports from home- this helps educate the patients and prepare them for the visit.
Dr Wilson uses voice recognition to input data into his EMR with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Overnight he saved $35,000 a year. He previously would dictate then send it to stenographer. Once he would get the documents back a few days later he would have to review each one and make any corrections and sign it. Now at the end of the day the dictations and transcriptions are done the same day and he doesn't have to look at it again. Being able to dictate a consult while seeing the patient is great. Now he can dictate a professional letter, print, and sign it that same day- it is something amazing. It has been a major turnaround in his practice. He is amazed at how accurate the voice recognition is. He dictates through a blue tooth clipped to his coat lapel- and according to him it is beautifully accurate. The EMR is a big time and money saver.
Everyone in the practice was anticipating the change and they were not intimidated by the switch to electronic medical records. He feels fortunate to have an excellent trainer. The trainer worked with the staff before hand over the phone preparing them and making the most of their time when the trainer came onsite. He gives advice to those implementing an EMR: Get a key person who will be the main contact between everyone. Shut down the office so there are no interferences or interuptions so the equipment can be installed and implemented. Make the office available and have staff and physicians available for the training.
Eisenhower Medical Center has partnered with McKesson and AZCOMP to provide their affiliated physicians with an EMR they support and recommend. Dr Wilson feels that EMC is very respected and he is a great admirer of Eisenhower. He is impressed with all the planning that had to go into this partnership. He waited until EMC chose an EMR before he implemented EMR. He thinks they chose a quality product and it is far an above what they would have gotten on their own. He looks forward to sending data directly to Eisenhower through Practice Partner. If you want to get started it is a very simple process with lots of people ready to help. Learn more about the partnership between EMC, McKesson and AZCOMP.
Dr Wilson has been practicing medicine for 48 years and he said that EMR is one of the best things that has happened to the medical profession. He is very impressed with being able to document, keep up, recall at your finger tips- without turnining a page, tearing a page or losing a paper. Dr Wilson gives advice to other physicians not on EMR who might be hesitant. It is intimidating but the only way to get familiar is to get into it (much like the hesitant physician when introduced to the robot, or other electronic solutions to our medical problems). Time is wasting. EMR is part of the cutting edge you need to keep up with medicine. Get into it- get started. He thought implementing EMR would dramatically impact their productivity in a negative way- but it did not.