NEW GLOUCESTER, ME – Healthcare IT News interviewed three solo practitioners who have met Stage 1 meaningful use guidelines, and asked what advice they might have for other solo practitioners or small practices.

Donald Moore, MD, a primary care physician who practices in Brooklyn, N.Y., has been using his Sage Intergy EHR for about five years.

Best advice for others:
“One of the things with gathering information and working on any project, as you get deeper, you get deeper. Yes, the patients benefit because the visits are more intensive and they are better informed. Part of what we do, especially in internal medicine, is very information-driven. The more information you have, the more likely you’re going to come to a correct diagnosis. The only thing that limits you gathering information is time. So if you don’t have to spend the time gathering information that you have gathered previously, but you can refresh yourself or you can access it very rapidly, then you are in a better decision-making position. If you have the information there, you know what the last CT scan was. You know that you did a CT scan, and you know that you did one three years before, you can see very quickly with just a click what it is, the consultant reports, you can just access it right away – everything almost on one page, then the decision-making gets faster and better. Stronger.”

[See also: Fallon Clinic says 96 percent of its docs have achieved MU.]

Harold A. Ferguson, DO, has been practicing family medicine solo for 24 years in a small, rural community of 10,000 people in Eaton, Ohio. He tapped athenahealth for his EMR.

Best advice for others:
"You have to embrace it. You have to excel at it. You have to use it to your advantage, or you’re going to get left behind. You’re just going to be playing catch-up. I think the patients really like it. I think now if you don’t have a computer, patients think, ‘Wow, you’re really behind. You can’t keep up.’ And that gives patients the impression that you’re not up to date, you’re not on top of things. When you have the computer and you’re doing these things, it gives them the impression that you’re on top of the game, you’re on top of your practice and you’re practicing good medicine. Your stethoscope helps you practice better medicine – you have to think of your computer like that. You have to use it as a tool to help you practice."

[See also: What's driving your EHR adoption?.]

Douglas Ashinsky MD, practices internal medicine in a solo practice in Warren, N.J. His EMR is Cerner Ambulatory PowerWorks (pictured at right).

Best advice for others:
"The valuable advice is, No. 1, the physician who’s the head of the practice needs to understand what meaningful use is, what the points are and needs to be involved in doing all of this because they’re ultimately the one responsible for the attestation. It’s not the office manager. It’s not the nurses. It’s not the med techs. They really need to know so that when they are documenting things, they’re documenting them in the correct spots. So when it is time to attest, they can actually have everything done correctly and not say, ‘Oh, why isn’t this, and why isn’t that?’ No. 2 is patience. Patience is a virtue. This is a work in progress. Like anything, there’s going to be mistakes made. There’s going to be things that you thought you might have done that you didn’t. The only way to learn is to have the patience and understand the mistake, say OK and say, ‘This is what I have to do the next time.' "