One of the items cited in this article is a "lousy workflow" which paper creates...tricks of the trade here include an EHR, using Nuance Dragon Dictation and emailing patients...and he notes how expensive it is to answer the phone...patients are happy with getting lab results via email too...and with the practice in order, he finds time to serve as a part time consultant...BD
Eight yea
rs in the restaurant business before medical school taught Tom Landholt, M.D. some valuable lessons that he now applies to his practice. A focus on excellence in customer service is essential to all businesses, including the practice of medicine, he stresses.
Without the technology, the practice would likely need at least three more support staff members and its margins would be much slimmer, Landholt contends.
“Most practices’ expenses are too high because they’ve never done cost accounting,” Hudson says. “Doctors need to go through the practice and identify ways to cut costs. There’s plenty of money to save by eliminating lousy workflows.”By relying on an electronic health record—Centricity from GE Healthcare, Waukesha, Wis. — the practice can handle a higher patient load, the physician contends. “My staff spends more time with patients than the average clinic because we’re not dealing with chasing paper,” he says. “The average doctor could probably see five more patients a day if they had access to all the right information. ”For the 10% of notes that must be dictated because of the level of detail, Landholt uses speech recognition software—Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance Communications Inc., Burlington, Mass.
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