Procyon Solutions

When your car breaks down you probably don't call your dentist to set up an appointment to fix it, do you? It doesn't make sense to call a dentist to repair your car, but many small and medium sized medical clinics are making similar decisions when it comes to dealing with their on-site technology needs. If the clinic's staff are asking the physicians to repair an internet connection or remove a paper jam from the main printer, it's almost as strange as calling your dentist to change the oil in your car. Here are 5 obvious clues that your medical clinic is in need of technical help:

1. The term “Remote Access” describes who's turn it is to control the remote for the waiting room television. Staff and physicians of medical clinics could greatly benefit from having access to the data stored on their clinics computer network from a remote location (any place other than their desk). A managed IT company can help you set up the technology that makes this possible, and can show you how to make use of remote access to benefit your clinic.
   
   
2. All staff of the medical clinic have a post-it note on their monitors that remind them to turn their computer off and back on if there are any problems. If the staff is turning their computers on and off all day and looking for solutions to equipment that isn't responding the way it should, there is a lot of productivity and time lost. A dedicated IT service can prevent most of these problems, and help you handle them more efficiently when they do occur.
   
   
3. The woman who processes insurance has been labeled by the rest of the staff as the “computer person”. She's the best bet for finding lost files in a computer, restarting a printer that's flashing the mysterious “printer not connected” message (even when you know it is!), and knows how to get the cursor to find it's way back to the screen when it disappears. The problem is, the person processing insurance for a medical clinic probably has more important things to do with her time than play tech support for the staff. A medical clinic with computer support services is one that allows the insurance processor to focus on her real job (which just happens to be one of the main ways the clinic earns money).
   
   
4. The new kid hired to help out with administrative tasks in the clinic asks how frequently things get backed-up, and everyone else thinks he's talking about constipation problems and refers him to one of the physician assistants for a check-up. If you don't have a regular back-up plan for your data, you risk losing everything important to the medical clinic operations. Not only should the important data get backed up daily, but it needs to be organized in a way that would allow recovery of information if data loss does happen.
   
   
5. When the office manager takes off on a two week vacation, she tells the staff everything they'll need is stored on her computer – but fails to leave her log-in information. After a week of checking through every drawer and scrap of paper on her desk, the password is discovered written on the back of a fax – and then another week is spent trying to find the required file in her massive computer folders! If there is a need for more than one person to have access to files and information, it can be stored in shared folders so it doesn't matter who is on vacation – anyone with access to the shared folder can retrieve the files they need. Productivity will probably increase if staff members aren't spending two weeks digging through desk drawers for passwords and searching through hundreds of files on a computer with no obvious filing system.
   
   

While these situations were meant to be a little on the humorous side, the fact remains that if you find yourself struggling with the technology in your clinic day after day, thinking there must be a better way to do things – chances are it's worth a few minutes of your time to look into getting your clinic the technical support it needs. With the proper technical support, your clinic will experience improved productivity with less wasted time trying to make things work. Have someone qualified in IT evaluate your technology needs – probably someone other than the insurance processor!

Call today for a FREE consultation: 1-888-391-3626