Love is in the EMR

Just in time for Valentines day, we thought we would share a heart-warming EMR love letter we stumbled upon from one of our long-time users, Dr. Alison Blazek of Houston, Texas. As the day of love approaches, we can’t help but boast that we at Practice Fusion feel pretty loved almost all of the time. We have users that take time out of their busy days to send holiday gifts, write emails and blog posts sharing their love for our product, just because. It makes all the early mornings and late nights worth it.

“Let me tell you the tale of my quest for an EMR and the love story that follows.

In 2008 I left a great job at MD Anderson to start my practice. With nothing but a new Vaio laptop, a stethoscope and a line of credit, I started my business and my medical practice.

One of my first decisions: Paper or Plastic? I decided to get an EMR if I could in any way afford it. I don’t like killing trees, I like being able to access my records from anywhere I can access the internet, and since I had a tabula rasa, I didn’t have to worry about converting charts to a new system.

My second decision: which EMR? I had no cash flow since it takes months to get contracted with insurance companies. I was doing hospice house calls to pay the bills. I started a process of reviewing all of the major players. I looked in vain for pricing on the internet. I tried to get prices from the vendors.

All of them required an online/phone meeting first so they could show me all of the bells and whistles. All of them would then drop the bomb about price. I would try no to gasp or laugh. They all wanted thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars for the system, PLUS I had to close my office for a week to train my staff, PLUS I had to pay their peeps several hundred dollars a day for the training (with no option for less days of training or no training), PLUS a monthly service fee. My favorite was the vendor that wanted me to pay for their staff to fly to Houston, put them up in a hotel and feed them, on top of the several hundred dollars a day for training. After a frustrating summer of these useless calls, I was starting to think, “Man, what have those trees every done for me? Why not kill a few of them?”

That is when I read about Practice Fusion. It was in the comments of an article in I believe the NYT, an article about poor adoption of EMRs by physicians. It said it was FREE. Well hallelujah!” -keep reading HERE

Do you have a EMR/Health IT love story you’d like to share? Send it to community@practicefusion.com.

Shea Steinberg

Shea Steinberg is a proactive Social Media Specialist at Practice Fusion. She maintains all of Practice Fusion’s social networks and is constantly promoting our EHR in the social media sphere. Also an active member of the EHRBlogger team, she writes about everything Healthcare IT, while using her sass to make a joke or two along the way. Whether it’s breaking news or a new social media tool for doctors, she’s on top of it. When not reaching out via social media, Shea cheers for her Alma mater, The University of Arizona (Go Wildcats!) and enjoys discovering new places in San Francisco. Connect with Shea: