It’s kind of funny how that plays out. And still today I see a great deal of variation, even in my own experiences. I had a dermatology appointment at one of our clinics a few months ago, and there were a bunch of laptops that they weren’t really using because of connectivity problems. I talked to the head nurse, and she said, ‘I really wanted wired PCs,’ and actually all of the treatment rooms are set up for wired PCs. They have counter tops and they have network connections to power, but no wired PCs. I asked her what happened, and she said, ‘My colleagues outvoted me. They didn’t want computers in the rooms, they wanted wireless devices, because they didn’t want to log in and out every time they went to a different room.
So now with the wireless not quite working right — which we did eventually fix for them — they were all fighting over the two or three PCs that were at the front registration desk. So I said, let’s put in those wired PCs in the rooms and let them keep the wireless laptops as well. It’s kind of a belt and suspenders approach. That way, they have something to fall back on, because with wireless, as good as you try to make it, it’s still not nearly as reliable as the wired infrastructure. Sometimes it is going to fail, and now they have something to fall back on.
Then I had an appointment at an orthopedic clinic, and I saw that they had little computers on wheels up and down the hallways, and people are working on them nonstop and their wireless is working great.
KG: It’s amazing the differences you can see from one clinic to another in terms of how well wireless is working, adoption levels, etc.
RP: Every clinic and every venue is going to be different. It’s not a cookie cutter; you can’t make a generalization. If you’ve seen one clinic, you’ve seen just that — one clinic. Each one is different in terms of their workflow and staffing and the way they react and use data and the system, and you just have to be very flexible and accommodating in terms of the underlying technology. But you want to do whatever you can to remove any impediment to the use of the electronic medical record. My constant refrain was, what are we worried about, $20-30,000 in devices, when I’ve got a $70 million dollar EMR project hanging in the balance? Let’s get real here. So you have to set the right expectations among your staff. It still requires a lot of work, but we really have accomplished a tremendous amount in a relatively short period of time.
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