One of the many things that I proud about Garden Ridge Animal Hospital is that we are computerized, “paper free” (almost), and have been since 1990. We started off using Apple Macintosh, and switched to Windows in 1997 when I got divorced from my Apple programming ex-husband. I was lucky to find a small company that does Veterinary Practice Manager Software and could write the custom program to import all the Mac data into Windows, no nothing was lost. Here it is 20 years later and I am still using that company.
I love computerized records. I can easily pull up a patient’s medical notes, at any computer, and in seconds I have all the data, instead of hunting down a paper file. I can easily see all the diagnoses, medicines, food, reactions at a glance. I can type a prescription label for Fido while in the exam room, print it in the pharmacy, and have a nurse fill it without me leaving the room! It is easy to set a recall to check up on Fluffy. But the biggest plus is all that data is backed up every night to 3 places. Backups are wonderful, and rarely have we had to use them when hard drives fail. Knock on wood.
Last week I had the misfortune to have a hard drive fail on the dedicated computer that runs the business side (emails, Quick books, etc.). It was NOT the medical side. I was flummoxed to say the least. I had to keep telling myself that there were ways around not having the financial and email data while the computer was being replaced. And since I back up religiously, my data wasn’t really “lost”. But it has been a pain to look up the dozens of passwords to log onto websites, banks, vendors, email accounts.
My computer is now replaced, working again, and life goes on. I didn’t want to think of myself as one of those “addicted” to technology, but it sure makes life easier when you can just log on and it remembers all those accounts and passwords.
What does this have to do with veterinary medicine? It is my promise to my clients that their data and their pet’s data are safe and backed up 3 ways. And if you ever travel, move, or seek specialty referral, it is uber easy for us to email them or print them out.
As we move into 2018, we may be asking if you would like to share an email or phone number to receive texts instead of postcard reminders. We tried this a few years ago, and most people didn’t want to share their email. But times keep changing, and we have many ways to reach out to our pet parents. So please don’t be offended if we ask you again about emails and phone numbers. We aren’t selling them. We just want to reach you in the format you would prefer to be contacted in.
