“Paging Doctor Doorknobs….”

My mom has to take a drug that needs to be monitored very closely by her doctor. We have to have a blood check every so often to be sure her dosage is correct. Today was the day to have the most recent check.

As I dropped her off at the entrance to the clinic and returned to park the car, I noticed that the parking lot was full. I had to park far away from the door, even though I have a handicapped permit for the car. All of the handicapped spots were full.

I went into the clinic to get her checked in. The entire lobby of the clinic was filled with people waiting to check in for their appointments. The line went all the way down the hall, then doubled over itself. It looked like the entrance to Walmart the Friday after Thanksgiving. Kids, parents, the elderly in wheelchairs as well as in chairs placed along the wall.  Very pregnant women. Very sick people.

There were three very harried women trying to process all of these people. The word went up and down the line that a fourth woman had called in sick. She was the smartest person of all those in that building.  Why? What was behind this?

The clinic has just switched over to electronic medical records.

This is a very small town. It is a small clinic. Granted, it was a Monday morning, and probably the height of cold and flu season. But it seemed as though every patient ever seen in this clinic had shown up this morning for an appointment.

In fact, that is what the computers thought. Every patient who had not been seen in the past three weeks was deemed a new patient by the computer. It required all information on each patient to be entered, each patient had to fill out new patient paperwork, provide insurance information and a picture i.d. It took an hour for me to get to the counter. My mom had been there two weeks ago, so she was in the system. It took about one minute to verify that and to notify her doctor that she was there.

I understand that these records will eventually save time and money. I know that it is necessary to keep up with new technology. But really, couldn’t they have handled the transition better than that? It appeared that they had no backup staff trained on the system, and those who were trained were struggling.

The doctor was grumbling about the technology, and how he hated to be looking at a screen rather than his patient. He is an older guy. I know he has practiced in this area for over 20 years. But he is trying to get with the system.

The people in line were pretty understanding for the most part. The grumbling was pretty quiet, and only a few people got snarky about it to the staff.

I have my own reservations about electronic records, primarily around the issue of security. I’m pretty touchy about privacy issues.

But as the doctor told my mom, once it is up and running, it will be “like snot on a doorknob”.

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