Saturday, January 26, 2008

Got Doc's?

Fuck EMR’s . Seriously. I found out this morning BY ACCIDENT that I am going to be losing my biggest account—the one that makes the house payment--- because the office is converting to EMR. For those of you that don’t know what that is, they are electronic medical records where the physician uses a template on a computer to input your problems and it is saved so other physicians in that system can access the data when necessary-a paperless record so to speak. (This is a very tiny explanation but it gives you the basic idea). They are the newest trend in health care and while I knew that someday all physicians offices would be switched to this type of system, this office I was fairly certain would not. There are 3 docs and one CNP in this practice and two of the docs are older and not good with change. The young one however, he is fairly fresh out of med school and is computer savvy so he is the one pushing the EMR. I think the thing that pisses me off more than anything is that I found out by accident. I had a call this morning from one of the office girls about something totally unrelated and she mentioned that the docs signed the paper work last Monday! She didn’t even know that meant I would be out of a job until I told her. She feels terrible about saying anything and made me promise not to let on that I know what is coming. I won't rat her out but I will tell the entire internet community. So it will be very interesting to see if they give me any kind of notice, or just one day work will not show up in my inbox. To give you a bit of background I have taken care of their transcription for almost 10 years. Granted I am not actually an employee but I know them all very very well—they happen to be the boys and husband’s physicians too. Interesting. I have never had a complaint, only praise from them, I have saved their collective asses more than I can tell you and there is a part of me that hopes their EMR crashes and they have no backup. You just don’t pull this kind of thing without even a heads up. As recently as last week I spoke with their office manager and she was delightfully thanking me for an idea that I had that is saving them a lot of grief in the records department. I know it all comes down to cold hard cash. Yes, they did pay me for my work. I just think it sucks that they could do this without feeling any need to let me know that I need to start looking for a new job. If we had an acrimonious relationship I would get it but we had moved past the point of an ancillary employee to that of friend and I deserve better than this. I have other clients but they are single doctor practices and they only cover the miscellaneous expenses of the family as obviously they are charged according to the amount of work they need and they produce less work. I love what I do and I am very very good at it. I do not want to start job hunting. I am reeling right now and have run the gamut of emotions in the last couple of hours. I am pissed, hurt, scared, nervous, and a few other things. I spent the last two hours putting together my resume…which I haven't had to do in many many years. My references are great so with hope I will be able to pick up more single offices to make up the difference. Since my work is all done digitally, I am not limited to my office area…so any of you docs in the United States reading this, ignore my first word in his post and know that I am an honest, hard working, intelligent, responsible, reliable, well educated woman with needs. Shit.

5 comments:

beagle said...

That really stinks OHN!
Thinking of you ...

Sitting In Silence said...

Oh this really Sux...how could they do this after so many years ?.

So unfair.....

Keep us posted on what happens.

katd said...

That really is terrible. I'm so sorry - just wanted to offer my support!

Kristi said...

I am so sorry this happened. The freelance world is a scary business for reasons exactly like what happened to you. 10 years of service and they treat you like this? It is so very wrong.

Brandy said...

Not to be completely grammatically incorrect but that just plain sucks. I do understand though. I lost my transcription position with my company when they decided to outsource to India to save money - and REALLY sacrifice quality. Oh well. Good luck with finding something new, I'll be thinking about you!