Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

I know I’ve noted this before, but since this is my blog I’m glad to say that I can post my personal musings all I want. While I guess I have a devotion to any readership there may be I hope my personal tracking of the blog and updates on its success or failures will be of interest to those who read. If it doesn’t people are welcome to ignore this post(Is that a feature in WordPress?).

I’m 2 months into my EMR and HIPAA blogging experience and I’ve learned more than I could ever imagine. In fact, I realize even more today that I may never have a complete handle on this industry, but I hope that some insights will help other people in “The EMR Experience.”(Maybe this should be the real name of my blog)

Today, I finally went over the 10,000 page hit mark. Not too bad for 2 months. Not too bad for doing it in my free time(and my boring e-commerce class). I think this is pretty significant considering I’ve only done 50 posts so far. The search engines have enjoyed those 50 postsand treated me well by referring new readers. Although some of the search phrases make me wonder why they clicked on my site(subject of a different post).

I only have two major dissappointments to date. First the number of people that lurk the website without commenting. Maybe I need to create some more controversial posts, say something bad about someone’s company or pay people to comment. Second, is the time that I have to committ to posting to the website. I would really have liked some of my other pages like EMR and EHR vendors, EMR vs. Paper Charts, EMR Evaluating and Purchasing, EMR Features and EMR Implementation Ideas to become a tool that could change the way people find, purchase and implement an EMR. It will happen, but I’m slighty saddened by their slow progress. Be patient and please lend any ideas you have.

Thanks to all those that are reading. The site seems to be gaining a certain forward momentum that will hopefully continue to progress and become a very valuable EMR resource on the net.

What better way to add a little bit of education during the wait time. I know that in every doctor’s office I’ve ever been to I’ve read every single thing posted or written on the wall and even read most of the outdated magazines that have been throught the ringer. I think the best solution is actually providing wireless internet access to me in the waiting room, but what about all those people who don’t have a laptop(or didn’t think to bring a laptop) to the Dr’s office?

The idea of having some podcasts available is a great idea. They could be educational as is described in a recent post on EMRUpdate where it gave some good ideas for sources:

Search engines
Sites like Medscape
Ipodder and Itunes both have searches for popular health related RSS feeds with audio

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/healthbeat
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=47403

You could easily digitize your own voice for short lectures on smoking etc., and have them available on the hard drive.

However, why not also include some more popular selections also?

I think this kind of model is perfect for the college health market too. Students are really into technology and would enjoy the use of this information. Also, many colleges have health educators who could spear head the project and create content that would be appropriate for the patients that are visiting. Not to mention advertising special benefits of a college health center like free and confidential HIV tests. I’ve wanted to do it on an even broader version with video and streaming the video and audio across the internet and allow questions where the internet provides nearly complete anonymity. I’ll have to take this into consideration for the new building we’re doing at my office.