Learn how to properly use your software and you’ll reap all the rewards that modern information management can deliver.

By Derek Greenwood

Although software is the ultimate management tool, it is often misused, misunderstood, and underappreciated.

You can think of management as being the way activities are organized and coordinated to achieve the goals of a business. The management process begins by first defining objectives, and then establishing policies that will guide activities to attain those objectives. In other words, polices are written that guide the coordination and organization of activities to achieve goals.

Every office has goals. Your goals may include helping patients attain better health by delivering superior chiropractic services. Then your office policies guide your employees to coordinate and achieve those goals.

What is software?

Software consists of carefully organized instructions and code that programmers write in a language the computer can understand and act upon. Software handles multitudes of common and specialized tasks, such as accounting, communicating, data processing, and word processing.

In other words, software is a series of exact instructions that tell the computer precisely what it is supposed to do. Software is the coordination and organization of activities performed by a computer.

Software is like being able to purchase “instant management in a can.”

Many doctors want the most basic software they can find; they may want it to do billing and nothing else. Why is this? It is likely because of these common myths and misconceptions.

Myth 1: Software is just for billing.

In all fairness, software was just for billing 25 years ago. Billing was the biggest problem offices had, so it was the first issue addressed by software companies.

In the late 1980s, however, software started to include appointment books, inventory, and statistics. These were all major breakthroughs that allowed for the more powerful software you see today.

Modern software is for the management of the entire office. While it does include billing, these programs also may include integrated appointment books, inventory control, insurance payment follow up, statistics, SOAP notes and narrative writing, document storage, and much more.

Myth 2: Software is not very important so you should spend as little time and money as possible on it.

Modern practice management software is exactly that — management software. Its sole purpose is to help manage the majority of the functions in your office.

If you use

your software to its fullest, you will receive the biggest return on your software investment. After all, it is helping you fully manage the clinic. The more the software does, the more it is of value to you.

Myth 3: You and your staff learned everything you need to know in school, so you should not have to spend time learning software, too.

There is always more to learn — especially when you install a new software system. No one thing may be very difficult, but there will be a lot of simple things to learn.

Any software system that is of any value will require the user to learn it. Most doctors who have successfully installed an electronic documentation system will say that it took time and dedication to get it up and running, but after it was implemented, it transformed their office.

The benefits of your software cannot be fully realized until you spend the time necessary to master it. In fact, the better, more powerful systems today are generally more flexible and customizable. But this also means better systems will require more of your time to put into service.

Keep in mind that the benefits are enormous in that you end up with a system that better suits your office and generates custom documentation that says exactly what you want it to say.

Myth 4: You think you can hand write a note the insurance company will approve of faster than software can.

Insurance companies don’t want old coded charts from the past. They are hard to read and do not contain all the information required. A modern, fully customizable documentation software package can write multiple page documents in the time it takes you to write a single paragraph by hand.

Modern documentation packages are no longer the canned affairs of the past. Some are so efficient they allow you to completely customize your SOAP notes and narratives to be exactly what you want, in your own wording.

Software exists that will help you with patient management, billing, noting, document storage, inventory, and more. The time to embrace and implement powerful software in your clinic has arrived.

Properly implemented, software can make your clinic more efficient, less stressful, less vulnerable to audits, and more profitable. The only thing stopping your office from receiving all of these benefits is not having the software needed or not learning how to use it fully.

Derek Greenwood is the founder and CEO of EON Systems Inc., creators of The Digital Office, an EHR solution. He can be reached at 800-955-6448, info@eonsystems.net, or through www.eonsystems.net.