January 1, 2008 was the date that our new medical group was formed: SOMA Orthopedics. One of our main goals at that time was to head full steam into the digital age and implement a digital office. While there were other significant issues in starting a new practice, my role in this journey was to tackle the EMR (electronic medical records) in a small multidisciplinary musculoskeletal practice.
I hope to will discuss the errors and successes that we experienced 12 months into this project. Naturally, I won’t be able to do this in one blog entry. I am not sure how many entries it will frankly take since I keep learning new things.
Choosing to implement an EMR is not an easy task in general. First of all, most physicians have little knowledge of computers and information systems. Vendors of EMR often have catchy phrases and finding substance in their advertising is often difficult. Then there are huge variations in the capabilities of different EMR, and some options may not be valuable to every practice. Finally, the costs can vary from several hundreds of dollars to several hundred thousands.
Personally, I looked at twenty five different EMR’s before settling on the final choice. The one we chose is not so important since it fit our practice and requirements specifically. However, how we arrived at our decision is more likely to apply to others in the same situation trying to choose an EMR.
Next time I will detail on the characteristics of our practice that molded our needs in an EMR.
