Tomorrow we open the Hahn and Nelson Family Medicine office! After 6 months of trying to decide whether to do it at all, and another 6 months of going with the decision to do it, it's finally going to happen. There have been very few snags, thanks to luck and the people that have been helping us. The biggest hurdle, as we feared, has been the credentialing process with all of the insurance companies we want to use. Thank goodness we had a pro working with us on that, on loan from the Antietam Health System. She's filed all of the applications for us, gotten together all of the necessary documents, and kept us updated on the status of each company. Without her, I'm not sure we could've done it as quickly or efficiently. It certainly left us free to work on a lot of other important issues. As it is, we are still not fully credentialed, but we're far enough along that it shouldn't be a problem. Some of the snags were unforseen, such as the problem with the phones last week. We got our office wired for 4 lines, including one fax, and thought we'd be ok if we just bought phones off the rack at Office Depot. Upon plugging them in and trying to use them while we were all in last week, we discovered it wasn't going to be that easy. Probably because of improper wiring, we were able to hear each other on the other line! Not good! So we've had to hire a contractor to come in and put in a full telephone system.... but at least it'll work and we'll have good support for it. The EMR (the website is not really functional yet, but keep watching!) we're using is kick-ass (EMR=Electronic Medical Record) because Matt and his buddy Shawn made it themselves -- they've been working on it for 4 years. It has some amazing bells and whistles -- ie, that phone call from a patient for a prescription refill? Just open that section of the patient's record, and message the provider. Not only will the provider have the prescription information right there, but so will the patient's contact information. Everything is in context with the relevant section of a patient's medical record. Plus it's got unparalleled tracking and reporting functions. AND it's easy to use...We're also using an online office management system called Office Ally. Although the scheduling is not as flexible as I'd like, it's very convenient and easy to use.
So, tomorrow! We already have a number of patients scheduled, and many more that we still have to schedule. As of Friday, almost 400 patients had called our voice mail and left messages that they want to become our patients and/or want appointments soon. Our open house is Friday afternoon.
So here's to a wildly successful new adventure!
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