On deciding upon an EMR (Electronic Medical Record)

As a full-time, full-scope Family Physician with an additional consultation-based office surgery practice, I have been immensely enjoying the practice of Medicine as it was meant to be practiced.

I am my own boss, I set my own hours and I actually like everybody I treat and interact with on a daily basis.

But, as the complexity of disease and our understanding of it increases - along with the expectations of our patients; I have been slowly getting literally buried under mountains of paperwork.  I am becoming slowly aware that I am having to spend more time on patients' paper than their actual bodies and minds, and this is clearly not the intention of our great forefathers that developed and created this wonderful profession.

Part of being a Doctor is to advance the knowledge of the profession and to eventually enable those that replace us to stand on our shoulders.

To that end, I find that I am coming to the point that I cannot continue without solving the problem of the paperwork that is trying to drag me down and pull me away from the Medical Frontier that I am supposed to be working to expand.

I have read numerous blogs, opinion articles, advertisements and posts from various Physicians and other parties that extol the virtues of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR).

So, a few years ago, I tried to install one in my office from a Vendor that provided an apparent "turn key" solution.  The experience of the process was poor, and the Vendor ended up going out of business - along with my data, which was held hostage.

Determined not to repeat that experience, I looked to my Provincial Government and Medical Association for some guidance and direction (both had been extolling the virtues of EMR's and how they would financially and otherwise support the departure from paper).

What I realized was that, unfortunately typical of government sponsored programs, the department responsible for helping Physician adopt an EMR, quickly became a source of an additional and needless administrative headache and additional mounds of paper.

Moreover, these agencies forced you to use one of three "approved" vendors for your EMR.  I have reviewed the software and support quality of these vendors, and have been far less than impressed with their approach to helping me with my mission critical work.

As such, a colleague of mine suggested that "Open Source" would be the way to go, and I quite agree!  The advantage is that the system is free and under constant evolution by the end users.  The system also runs under the extremely stable (and free) Linux Ubuntu operating system.

The system is called OSCAR, for "Open Source Clinical Application Resource", and a great description of the system is here at the OSCAR PEI Blog.

This Blog is basically a description of my trials and tribulations experienced in installing OSCAR in my office..........wish me luck!