Three-Doctor Practice Saves $30,000-40,000 a Year on Paper Charts

Nice story on the transition to paperless and a lot of good points made here...and the employees are much happier. I can almost instantly tell when I walk in to a paper office these days too, with the mad scramble going to the the fax machine and the sense of urgency with running paper files all over the office. You don't have this in a true electronic office and with accuracy, you no longer have to live with "under coding" as all the specific data is in place with the patient chart and patients really appreciate it. Never sell yourself short with any EMR vendor with training, take all you can get. BD

ROHNERT PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Five years ago, Dr. Andrew Roudebush says he was computer naïve. That was just before he and two other doctors started Capital Family Care, a primary care practice in Jefferson City, Missouri. “I could write email and that’s about all,” he says. “I didn’t even know how to make copies.”
Now everyone in the practice uses electronic medical records and he calculates that saves $30,000 to $40,000 a year in just the cost of not having paper charts. “That’s only the basic costs – transcription, pulling charts, storage and so on. It doesn’t cover all the other savings that come with it.”
But to patients the most obvious gain is the quiet efficiency with which the busy office runs. Unlike other practices with two or three doctors, there are no hurried searches for charts or scribbled messages being passed between staff members and an absence of the distracting noise of phone conversations to sort out information that has gone astray.
“The reduced level of frustration makes for a happier and smooth-running office and there’s no doubt that carries over into better patient care. All of us – nurses, receptionist, my partners, even one staff member who previously was computerphobic – say we would never go back to traditional charting.”
The system has proved especially valuable in a three-doctor office, Roudebush says, because with doctors having to cover for each other, they have instant access to each other’s records, even if they are at home. “I can tell emergency room doctors in the middle of the night exactly what medications one of my partner’s patients is on or just about any other information they are likely to want.”