WiR 01.05.10

Well, it's been a busy few weeks, and holidays are never kind to physicians. However, I think some progress has been made. I now have a Gigabit connection with the kitchen after another visit from the electrician, and my cable and phone lines have whole-house surge protection. The down side is the electrical box is getting water from outside, and will have to be reworked. I've ordered a new Motion C5 with a solid state drive and 2 MB of RAM, and am looking forward to how that works at home and the hospitals. It has wireless N, so I should see a bump up in speed at home. I think there's a huge gap between the real-time needs of physicians and what can be delivered with hardware, software, and support services. I did notice that turn-around times of dictated progress notes are better, but consults take way too long. A physician I ran into over the holiday weekend showed me a work-around that will help, but the time lags are still problematic, and makes the review process chaotic. There's still a disconnect between paper and electronic charts; however, one recalcitrant hospital has transitioned vital signs from paper to the electronic chart. Finally! I had the "opportunity" to update my Dell Latitude C600 yesterday, an 800 MHz Pentium III using 512 MB of RAM laptop that creaked through the process at an agonizingly slow pace. Things have gotten better in the past decade, and even the past 2 years, which I think I'll see with my current C5 upgrade. On the horizon, Comcast hasn't gotten to us yet with the service upgrade, though I've read about the surrounding areas seeing the new speeds. My Palm Treo 700p through Verizon is becoming a bit more annoying, so I'm watching to see if Verizon picks up on the Pre, which is supposed to be happening shortly. I kick around the idea of maybe building an desk integrated touch screen.