Next General Meeting: Program Preview: At the next DACS General Meeting on November 2nd, we will explore a notorious lagging indicator of America’s health establishment - electronic medical records. Jack Mortell, president of sales for Professional Data Systems, a White Plains IT consulting firm, will discuss the promise and the pitfalls of digital technology and the slow revolution it is creating in health care. Professional Data Systems provides business IT services as well as medical, but for Mortell healthcare is a family tradition–his father’s company, New Jersey-based Physician Computer Network, provided practice management software to physicians’ offices. At 39, he is a child of the computer age and a veteran of the campaigns over Y2K and the struggle of businesses and medical practices to shield their data from self-destruction. His office, a short distance from Westchester Airport is in full-press mode from dawn to dusk, with brief trips to the in-house pinball machine or dartboard for tension-relief. It’s a time-worn stereotype of a busy medical office – a queue of waiting patients served by a bevy of front-desk and support staff, backed up by endless shelves of dusty files bulging with personal medical histories, x-rays, lab test reports and insurance forms. Contrast this with the modern corporate office boasting a mosaic of computer workstations linked by local and distant networks to a Website and a myriad of documents, manuals, blueprints and personnel files, all long-since converted from paper to the ones and zeroes of digital discourse and stored in secured locations. In the rude and raucous debate over universal healthcare, a growing chorus of reformers is calling on physicians to follow the lead of business and embrace the information age. In fact, some are claiming that technology could usher in a new era of shared medical information, portable diagnostics and test results, and improved coordination between doctors and patients. Both Democratic and Republican candidates for president in 2008 agreed that adopting electronic medical records (EMR) could help reduce the costs of reform, and a Rand Corporation study claimed that widespread, effective use of EMRs could save the United States from $162 billion to as much as $346 billion annually. Even so, American medicine is only slowly adapting to the information age. In a 2008 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine and reported in the New York Times, fewer than 9 percent of small medical offices (1-3 doctors) had adopted EMRs, while slightly more than half of large practices had gone digital. Jack’s presentation will cut through the hassle, the hype and the hysteria confronting medical doctors seeking to modernize, and render the debate into plain English. He will explain the many hurdles doctors face in upgrade their practices–including fear of change, uncertain costs, staff culture and training, software and hardware, and just plain overwork. He will dispell the confusion around acronyms like ARRA, CCHIT, HER, ONCHIT and PQRI, and he will outline some of the many options medical practices have to update and streamline their operations without going to full EMR. As a reminder, our General Meetings are free and open to the public, so invite anyone you know who would be interested in this topic–even your family doctor. DACS meetings are held at the Danbury Hospital auditorium. (Click here for directions.) Activities begin at 6:30 p.m. with registration and casual networking. The meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. with a question and answer period (Ask DACS), followed by announcements and a short break. The featured evening presentation begins at 8:00. Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS) is a registered nonprofit and has been serving the region since 1990. Members receive an award-winning newsletter, members-only workshops and events, and access to volunteer phone support.
|
 Click Here |
 |
 |
DacsGear!
|