I acquired another patient yesterday.
I stopped by the hospital to get coffee in the am. Left my purse in the car. Coffee was free for providers the whole nine years that I was an employee, but no longer. They know me though, so she let me wander off with my coffee and bring the money back. I did, and paid for the next two non-provider coffees in line.
I wandered in to the Orthopedics office, because the doctors have turned over and I haven't met the new ones yet. It is nice to shake hands. I talked to the receptionist and she asked if I am taking new patients. I explained that I've been out since early June, but we are working furiously on the paper work for the physician assistant. The physician assistant has lived here since 1984, and it's a town of 9000, so the receptionist knows her. Not only that, but mine is the only primary care office in town that is not part of the hospital and takes insurance. She described a hipaa violation involving an emergency room doctor and her daughter and she doesn't want her medical information on the hospital's massive electronic medical record. Our 25 bed hospital hooked up with Swedish in Seattle, which was then eaten by Providence, so now we are vaguely Catholic, I guess. Our hospital is the only one in our county, so it does not leave a lot of choices.
Anyhow, the receptionist is going to get on our wait list. She was pleased that my electronic medical record is separate and that I just give people a copy of their note at each visit. The hospital EMR epic now has a "patient portal" to satisfy "meaningful use" but it frankly sucks. It lets people see the past medical history, allergies, family history, but you cannot view the doctor's "history of present illness" or "assessment and plan". To get your hands on what the physician really said, you have to sign a consent and demand your note. I think this is stupid, obfuscating and rather dishonest, but it's a big corporation. Big corporations are generally stupid eventually as they get mired down in their own rules.
As soon as the state approves our physician assistant supervision plan, we send it to my malpractice and the malpractice of the kind doctor (he is NOT part of the corporation) and once that's cleared, she can start. We have 230 cancelled visits to catch up and a wait list of 30 new patients. No, maybe 31.
I did get to shake hands with the orthopedist. I also talked to the physician assistant there for a bit. Told him I'm done with lung testing and on to muscle testing. Labs for myasthenia gravis, ugh, I read about it yesterday and electromyography, aka an emg, next week. All the patients that I've sent for emgs complain that it hurts to have needles stuck in your muscles, so something to look forward to.