EMR

When I started my private practice in the fall of 2007, I had many decisions to make. For instance, did I want to do mostly therapy or mostly medication management? Did I want to set up my office completely on my own, or join a group? Did I want a paperless practice?
Back then, Zoe was 6 months old, Aidan was 3 and 1/2, and I was just starting to go back to work. Did I have time to think through all these issues? Actually, did I really think through the issues of starting my own practice?
I ended up joining a group because of happenstance, and I started seeing patients. Using papers. Lots and lots of papers. My pile of files grew, and grew, and grew It grew out of my little work bag, then I moved on to a bigger bag, with wheels. Then I got a file cabinet in my office, then I got a bigger file cabinet. Then I moved the files to the back office.
Now, some 500+ patients later, I really needed to move on to a paperless practice.
Over the last decade, most hospitals had moved away from papers to electronic medical records, which had grown into a very large, and profitable industry. For my little one woman shop, I did not have the luxury of hiring consultants to figure these things out for me. On the other hand, Hubby had been with me, growing this practice, and he did used to work as a consultant. On his advice, we made the switch.
Let me just make the record very clear: It is a pain to make the switch. You don't need to hear about the nitty gritty details of scanning charts, uploading charts, and blah, blah, blah. I now hear the scanner in my sleep.
What is interesting, is that electronic medical records are so widely accepted. Do people not realize that digital data storage is just NOT safe?! Sure, I am using a government certified program, my patients' information are stored in the cloud, it takes two login names and my very secure password, involving a capitalized letter, and numbers, and 10 character length password. However, do we not know about hackers? Hackers that broke into people's phones? Government e mails?
With paper charts, it is behind two locks, and about 10 people in this whole world, plus all the locksmiths, can have access to. With digital information, thousands are hackers are just waiting and working on it all the time.
Moreover, the way diagnoses are kept will be changing. The ICD-10 process will be in place, and there will be over 140,000 unique codes to describe the medical condition being treated. It is no secret that these codes are being used so that information can be extracted, so that 'they' can understand more and more about 'us.'
I am probably paranoid, but to not be, I think, is a bit naive. So anyway, I am moving forward with turning my practice into a paperless one, because I think the government is going to make me soon anyway, and I will, in fact, be more productive. My own doctors also use EMR, and I am kinda ok with that. But still, the whole thing is just alarming.