concept: technology for providers

Let's reach back and pluck an insurance actuary from 100 years ago and plop the hapless soul into the bowels of a modern insurance company. He (almost certainly not she) would be lost. No adding machines. No ledger books, pencils, sharpeners, reference books, data file... all have been replaced by computers. A hundredfold or more increase in productivity has followed the introduction of technology into most cognitive-based human endeavors.

While our time machine is still warmed up, let's snatch a doctor from 1909 as well. If we drop him in the chart room of any of our community mental health clinics, he would be right at home. Oh, he might be aghast at how thick the charts are, but the paper, folders, staplers, stacks of forms, file cabinets, clerks running around looking for charts while exasperated physicians anxiously look on -- all these things would be familiar. Crowded waiting rooms full of anxious patients? Familiar. Missed, double-booked, delayed appointments? Familiar. Endless difficulties with scheduling? Familiar. Trouble getting vital information from charts or from other parts of the health care system? Familiar. The treatments have improved (praise be!), the paperwork burden has grown (not so good), but the basic support structure we offer physicians is little changed in the past one hundred years.

Even if our turn-of-the-20th-century doc happened to land in one of the rare community mental health clinics that uses completely electronic records (don't bother looking for one in Sacramento County), he would likely still see a familiar sight: physicians struggling to use support tools created, managed, and implemented by people who cannot understand the challenges faced by busy clinicians. No hundred-fold increase in productivity has occurred in clinical medicine! Rather, the march of technology has often hindered rather than helped the modern physician.

SacDoc changes the equation.

I was a telecommunications engineer for more than a decade before going to medical school. With an intimate knowledge of computers, communications, and data security along with over a decade of ongoing, first-hand experience as a community physician, I have invested SacDoc with a unique blend of perspectives (and a dose of narcissism). Being conceived, created, implemented, expanded, and maintained by a full-time practicing physician insures that SacDoc's documentation, medical record storage and retrieval, and decision support functions are tools that assist rather than frustrate.

SacDoc's documentation functions have been used -- sometimes openly and sometimes surreptitiously -- in six different Sacramento County community mental health clinics. Through it all, SacDoc has not cost Sacramento County or us, the taxpayers, one single dime.

conventional scheduling

SacDoc has a conventional scheduling system with a difference. It relies on soft security: any staff can make schedule, cancel, or reschedule any appointment, but everyone is kept accountable and mistakes are easily backed out. Doctors can manage their own availability and review their schedule from any internet-enabled computer or smartphone anywhere in the world.

Docs can easily make follow-up appointments for patients during each visit, adding the power of a face-to-face negotiation to the appointment process. Invested patients are then more likely to keep their appointments. Integration with the documentation and records system means that follow-up appointments can be made with only a few clicks, and are automatically documented.

Giving physicians the tools they need can result in the same kinds of productivity gains seen in other industries. Physician reimbursement is the single biggest line item in community mental health programs. It makes sense to insure that every dollar spent on doctor time contributes to patient care, not paperwork.

Proceed to technology for consumers