I have office hours Tuesday and Thursday mornings. That means I typically see between 15 to 25 people between 8 am and noon. Today's office was a lot slower, probably because there was some ice on the road here in Dallas, and people in Texas are justifiably paranoid about driving on ice. On a busy office day, it is non-stop patient after patient until I am practically brain dead, and then I try and dictate the charts in between patients or immediately after office. We all hear about the incentives to switch to electronic medical records (EMR) but it is not as easy as it seems. We use Macpractice for our office and there are no off the shelf programs adequate for a vascular surgery practice for Apple computers. Fortunately Apple was kind enough to work with one of my partners to develop a program for us at no charge. Anyway we will be transitioning over the next few months. Right now I dictate all my notes. I am not sure it will save time to transition to EMR, but that seems to be the trend.
I really enjoy office, it is fun seeing my older patients, but it does get tiring after a while. It really hurts to lose patients. I lost one of my favorite patients 2 months ago, and it still stings to think about him. If i ever get used to losing patients, then I need to retire or find some other line of work I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment