Most medical offices are using an electronic practice management (EPM) system today. This software is far different than the older, hand-drawn systems of the past. The EPM market has expanded over the last twenty or so years to include a variety of products on several platforms. Unfortunately, while many such systems have been implemented and maintained to this day, only rarely is a paperless office achieved. For subjective-objective-assessment-style planning, the first generation of electronic medical records (EMR) systems worked well. Practices with text-oriented system needs tend to fare better, as compared to graphic-oriented practices such as in the field of ophthalmology. At our practice we have used an electronic practice management system since 1983. This software, though adequate for billing and scheduling, still accumulated stacks of paper records which required an increasing expense just to store the matter. As we considered a change to an electronic medical records system, our practice compared the expected costs for paper records storage to the costs of converting over to a new electronic system. We fully understood that we'd have to become more efficient while maintaining full access to our stored information. System Implementation Costs include: * Infrastructure * Consulting * Software * Hardware * Tech Support Also include the cost of additional work-hours which will be spent training people on the new system, along with data entry. In most cases a practice uses both the old and new systems concurrently until the entire conversion is complete. In the meantime, there could be some redundant tasks. Our ultimate choice was formulated from considering the need to reduce the mass of paper we were storing. Meanwhile, there was the opportunity to proactively implement the new privacy and security guidelines being created. System Benefits Include: * Improved Communication * Better Efficiency * Compliance * Documentation * Improved Integration At our practice, the business choice came down to the belief that we could recoup our investment in approximately five years. This calculation was based on the savings of projected storage space costs, along with reduced needs for printing expenses and services. It is more difficult to measure the value of change to job efficiency, but we are monitoring these factors to accurately measure returns on our investment. The overall trend seems to be toward a world where EMR is standard. Insurance companies and government are placing more pressure on to standardize medical documents, and EMR could soon become obligatory. Costs are dropping as more businesses adopt the format; soon even the smallest practices may have to option to switch to a paperless practice.

This sweeping trend is sure to affect a massive change in the way medical practices conduct business into the future. Your practice has the choice of choosing to enact this change, or wait until the change is effected upon it.