I decided to start EMRSurvival.com in 2010 to help physicians who like myself are taking care of patients in a small to medium sized practice environment and are using an EMR or are thinking about using an EMR. Physicians who deliver care in the small to medium practice setting are responsible for both clinical care and the successful operation of the computer system. It is difficult to balance the work of taking care of complex patients and at the same time being called upon to troubleshoot failures of the network, the hardware and the software. The survival/viability of the practice and the quality of care that is delivered to the patient is at risk on a daily basis when physicians utilize an EMR. This risk may seem overwhelming to many practices, yet the reward of working in a fully functional digital medical office is great.
The goal of this website is to expose you to the day to day activities of how one small practice survives and continuously evolves to achieve meaningful use of an EMR.
Additional goals include sharing stories of other practices that are meaningful users and providing you with educational materials in print and multimedia formats.
My qualifications are that I am a Board Certified Internal Medicine physician who has been in practice for over two decades. My experience with health information technology began in 2003 when my former partners and I established a new practice and I became the physician champion responsible for the successful implementation of the EMR. Since that time, I have formed my own medical practice with a goal of creating a fully operational healthcare system for my patients. Over the past decade, I have participated in four practice-based research projects using EMR and health information exchange to improve the quality of care I deliver to my patients. I was one of twelve Medical Informaticians chosen from across the U.S. to define the training requirements for Applied Clinical Informatics as a Medical Specialty and I have been a lecturer for the Northwestern University Medical Informatics Program and a clinical instructor teaching Rush Copley Family Practice Residents on the use of EMR.
As former VP and CMIO for Northern Illinois Physicians For Connectivity, a community based organization, I helped raise awareness of the benefits of EMR and promoted sharing of healthcare information among healthcare providers and patients. In 2011, I was appointed to the State of Illinois HIE Advisory Board, where I continue my passion for health information exchange.
The content of this website is mine together with the authors whom I have chosen to share their stories with you. The opinions the authors express are not necessarily the opinions of EMRsurvival.com or the author’s employers.
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