Can you help us go chartless?

Most practice management systems support a fully digital record now, so the question is rarely whether the software can do it. It is whether the practice can.

The decision about old records comes first. Three options and they cost very differently. Scan everything, which is thorough and expensive and takes months. Scan on demand, where a chart gets scanned the next time that patient comes in, which spreads the cost and means the active caseload converts itself within a year or two. Or keep paper archives for the retention period and go digital from a start date forward, which is cheapest and means two places to look for a while. Most practices we have helped chose the middle option and were happy with it.

Then the exam rooms. This is where chartless projects actually fail. If entering the record is awkward, staff will write on paper and enter it later, which is worse than paper because it happens twice. What works: a screen positioned so the vet can use it without turning their back on the client or the patient, a keyboard and surface that can be wiped down, and enough machines that nobody is waiting. Tablets work well for some practices and are dropped in others, and that depends on your team rather than on the tablet.

What we handle: the workstations and mounting, the Wi-Fi coverage in treatment and exam areas which usually needs attention, making sure the practice software performs when everyone is in it at once, scanner setup, and the backup, because at the point you go chartless the record is the only copy and backup stops being a formality.

One thing worth saying on that last point. A practice with paper charts has a bad day if the server goes down. A chartless practice has a very bad day. Before you make the switch, we want to have done a test restore in front of you and agreed what happens on a day when the system is unavailable, including what gets written on paper and how it gets entered afterwards.