What My Orthodontist Can Teach You About IT
At the doctor's office this morning, I was greeted with the letter shown in the photo: "We are in the process of converting our manual records to EMR (Electronic Medical Records)."
Like most healthcare practices, they are switching to electronic medical records. As you would expect, there was a young lady scanning all the old paper records into the computer.
But six months after they switched to EMR, patients still have to fill-out a small stack of paper forms (They asked for my name, birthday, and contact information five times.) You can fill-out the forms on their website, they say. But when I checked, all they had was links to download the paper forms ahead of time.
I filled out all the forms and then watched as an assistant typed my information into a laptop. I think they missed the point.
Across town, my orthodontist had a computer setup at reception where patients entered their own information directly into the computer...fifteen years ago.
This post is not to single-out one doctor's office. The reality is every business has its own version of the paper patient form (tell me again why I have to wait in line to talk to someone to check into a hotel?).
Technology does not automatically make operations better. You have to change the workflows, too.