PMS and EMR

OK, before you are mislead by the title of this post, I'm talking about practice management systems and electronic medical records. I've do some work for a few physician's on the side and I've recently been tasked with setting up new billing and EMR software in two separate clinics. The billing software I'm putting in is Data Strategies Elligence software and Medinotes Charting Plus. So far I've gotten the two systems up and running to get in one of the clinics and I just need to iron out a few wrinkles with the interface.

The other clinic was using an old version of PCN, a billing system that has since been bought out around 150 times! Just trying to tack down who is currently responsible for it has been a task in itself. The conversion process hasn't been any smoother. Basically, the only way to get extract the current data is to spool reports to ASCII test files and pray that the programmers can manhandle the file to make it work. It has not been fun to say the least.

Patient Flow Analysis

We've had a great increase in patient volume over the past six months. This has caused a few problems, problems I love to have mind you, but problems none the less. The primary concern we have right now is the patient admissions wait time is exceeding our targeted goals. Our primary goal is superior patient care, and that care begins the moment the patient walks into our hospital. If a patient comes in and has to wait 30 minutes before they are admitted they develop an impression of us before the actual care takes place. This of course is a terrible thing for us as well as the patients.

I'm working on a way to track a patient throughtout the facility in order to identify bottlenecks and possible areas of improvements. I use the term track loosely. I don't intend to use any form of RFID or video monitors to watch a patient. Instead it will all be employee driven. For example each employee that interacts with a patient will be responsible for "logging" that interaction into the patient tracking system. I've just started this project and and evaluating coding it in ASP.NET/C#. I've seen some pretty nifty things that are possible so far.

Been busy

It's been a busy couple of months...

We've got a pretty big project on the horizon at work so I've been putting in some long hours to try and get things ready. The most pressing issues at the moment, and the only action I can actually take at the moment is to redesign our public website and internal intranet.

I've looked over literally dozens of intranet solutions from free opensource options to pricy commercial apps. I worked on trying to get a Plone site for about 2 weeks. I was able to get it customized to a certain degree, but I finally had to admit to myself that I didn't have the time or skills to make it do what I want. Right now I'm looking into Sharepoint. I'm not sure if I could get away with just using Sharepoint services, or if I need the full Portal product. I like the intergration with AD and the document management/versioning features, but to do some of the company-wide things I'd like to do would require the Sharepoint Portal 2003, and they ain't giving it away ($5000).

I'll probably just go with a template for the public site for now. I know they can look cheesy, but it'll have to do until I have time to devote more attention to it.

this WEEK in TECH | your first podcast of the week is the last word in tech

this WEEK in TECH

Check this out, the guys from "The Screensavers" are back doing there own thing in a weekly podcast. I've listened to several episode so far and it's very cool. Keep up the good work guys!

Coding 4 Fun

Coding 4 Fun

I recently decided to learn to program again, so I was roaming the web trying to gather as much info as I could when I found this site. It's a Microsoft site basically aimed at amateurs and hobbyists. There are all sorts of articles and resources to get you started and even free "Express" versions of their Visual Studio products. Check it out, pretty cool.

43 Things

43 Things

Stumbled on this neat site the other day. Basically it a a huge list of things people want to do (i.e. brew my own beer, learn to dance, learn to program). It's pretty cool because you can add things to your profile that you would also like to and join a little club of others with the same goals. People who have completed a said goal can offer to lend their help to those that come after them.

Right now I'm working on three goals:
1. Learn python
2. Wake up when my alarm clock goes off
3. Stop procrastinating

Back in action

Ok, gonna try this again. It's been two years since my first and only post, but I'm gonna try again. I'm not sure what I want to accomplish yet. Right now I'm just brainstorming and looking over other blogs for ideas.

Well, I guess I'm blogging now... Never been much of a web publishing guy, so this should ease me into things nicely. I'm not sure if anyone will ever read this, but I'll try to update at least a couple of times a week. So, here goes...