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

(EMAILWIRE.COM, July 16, 2007 ) ROHNERT PARK, CA -- 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.” In particular, he says, it doesn’t include the heavy costs of underbilling that so many practices find themselves doing to avoid any possibility of ruinous penalties. “The accurate documentation that comes with using computers means that our coding is at a premium,” he comments. 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. “That’s because all the documentation any of us might need is available at everyone’s fingertips. There’s no more fumbling for a note in a paper chart that may or may not be there, for example, or trying to remember what exactly I had in mind when I made that note. If a patient wants information, a nurse can just call it up: she doesn’t have to ask me for it and no one has to remember to call the patient back later,” Roudebush says. “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.” Like many others with little initial knowledge of the subject, he looked for guidance, among other places, to a survey of electronic medical records by Family Practice Management, journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians. There he found ChartWare, of Rohnert Park, California (www.chartware.com), the only five-star system suitable for both large and small applications. “When we tried it, we discovered that it was also far more user friendly than others we looked at. From the beginning I found that I could adapt it in any way I wanted, however complicated the patient’s history was, instead of having to follow a pattern laid down by the system. So, if I’m treating a patient for hypertension and he suddenly tells me he has symptoms of diabetes, I simply fit the information into the chart then and there.” 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.” He has striking corroboration that ChartWare was the right choice. During the first day or so of every internship by medical students at the practice, he sits down with them for a few minutes to show them how the system works. “I’m still amazed by how easy they find it,” he says. # # # # # ChartWare Inc.Dr. David Tully-Smith, 707-323-2298dts@chartware.com ###This press release was issued through GroupWeb EmailWire.Com. For more information on press release distribution, go to http://www.emailwire.com.

ChartWare Inc.
Dr. David Tully-Smith

reggreen@charter.net