By 1997, I had established an "in-house" billing system for over 100,000 visits a year(3 residencies) at the University of Tennessee, Memphis. Cost about $140, 000 dollars a year with 3 FTE and some desk top computers. That year we established an EMR demonstration project at one residency for less than $30,000. We paid for these things from patient care revenue.The University decided that they would collapse the system into an IDX national computer service which ended up costing millions of dollars. As of today, they still lack an EMR in their family medicine centers.
Medicos started up without government funds in 1999 paying about $35,000 for Practice Partner EMR which was run on a network of five desk top computers. Immediately Medicos saved the cost of a medical records person. Now billing over 60,000 vists a year, Medicos recently upgraded to a 1.5 terabyte server with a random array of independent devices (5 parallel storages to protect against loss). I will not live long enough to use this amount of memory. Our entire record room for 80,000 individual registered patients requires a space of about 3 feet by 3 feet.
Thus, Medicos plans to hold records until the time that society bombs itself back into the stone age. Without an EMR, I recommend the IRS statute of limitations which is 7 years. OB charts remain an outlier currently under study. We scan those following delivery. Comments are appreciated.
With best wishes for your professional success,
Wm. MacMillan Rodney MD, FAAFP, FACEP
Adjunct Professor of Family Medicine
American Board of Family Medicine Obstetrics
Chair, Academic Affairs
Medicos para la Familia
Nashville, Memphis and rural
www.psot.com
Index--record storage, electronic medical records(EMR)
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