May 22, 2013
Dr. Rick Weber has spent 25 years practicing medicine. About 4 years ago, he digitized his urgent care practice, converting all his patient files to electronic health records.
"We don't have to go looking for charts, it's all on the computer. It saves space and time. What we do is just use a mouse and click different pull down categories to get our medical records complete and then we can use that medical record and send it to whoever we need to or save it in our files or bring it back up when the patient comes back again."
"And while this technology is still relatively new, most in the health care professionals have heard of it and want a part in it."
"I would be glad to have them! First of all with the storage issues and the limited space we have in our health departments it would help us out tremendously. But also it would be interesting because it would help the patients. We could speed up our service to the patient and that would be more efficient for them and us and hopefully cut down on errors as well."
Kirkland says the Houston County Health Department is trying to implement electronic health records into their practice, but budgeting is a concern.
"There are certain computers, equipment, and programs you would need to do this so getting that funding is a big part of it and it can be a barrier for us."
So next time you visit the doctor's office, take a look at what kind of technology they're using.
According to Weber, newer technology means shorter wait-times and fewer mistakes.
We want to hear your comments on this story…sign up and post your comments. The Comment Area is located at the bottom of this page. Come on…Join the conversation.
