Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

The past couple weeks I’ve gotten a few emails and phone calls from my EMR vendor about having a few other college health clinics(doctor’s offices) come and take a look at our EMR implementation. I always go into these with a little bit of a mixed bag since I know that my EMR vendor would like me to speak positively to the client. In fact, in many ways it is in my best interest to help make my EMR vendor successful. The more offices my EMR vendor signs up, the more money they’ll have to stay around and continue to develop the product. However, I always wonder if the trade is really a fair one.

In the end, I love to have other people come and take a look at my EMR implementation. My wife just gave birth to our second child. You know I’m that proud daddy carrying around his little princess to show her off to all those around me. My EMR implementation isn’t that much different. It’s my little baby that I want to show off to other people.

Another part of the satisfaction of a site visit is that my EMR vendor is saying that our implementation of EMR is one of their premier implementations(yes, I know that is a run on sentence, but I’m too tired to fix it now). An EMR company wouldn’t send clients to a failed or shoddy implementation. I take real pride in that recognition.

However, the best part of site visits is the time to be able to connect and collaborate with other colleagues from around the country. It’s always fun to get a different perspective on what should be very similar processes. Plus, I just love interacting with people. We have two coming up in the next month. I’ll let you know how they go. If they don’t buy me lunch then you can guarantee they weren’t as good.