• See the picture of the butler on our web site? (www.SmartDoc.com) That says it all.  Every new client comes with special needs and desires.  You want this and need that.  And you don't need to explain yourself.  Just tell the butler (that's us!) what you need and how you want it done .  .  .  if you don't like the way it's cooked, send it back until it's right! Any questions?

• From time to time, everyone has issues that arise.  The difference is in how those issues are handled.  At SmartDoc, all you have to do is call us.  A real human being answers the phone and assists you in solving whatever problems may arise.  We'll stay on the phone until you are satisfied.  It's just good old-fashioned service .  .  .  with technology that works!

HOW IT WORKS

• OUR SYSTEM IS TOTALLY AUTOMATED AND ONLINE  

DIAL-UP RECORDED DICTATION

• For dial-up dictation, you simply call the toll-free number, enter your password and dictate.  Press two to record, three to rewind, five to save--that kind of stuff. 
• The advantage of dial-up is that once you save the report or hang up the phone, the voice file is in our office, ready to be transcribed.  You don't have to deliver the recording. 
• Another advantage is that the voice files (which are recorded digitally) are immediately available online for you to track through all their phases, and even listen to before they're transcribed (see Document Tracing and Tracking below).
• The disadvantage, of course, is that you must dictate from a phone. 

HAND-HELD RECORDED DICTATION

• Hand-held recorders are a little different.  The obvious advantage to hand-held recorders is portability.
• Like dial-up, an equal advantage is that you can immediately begin tracking your work online after uploading. 
• You can listen to your dictation online, immediately after it's uploaded even before it's transcribed.
• The disadvantage is that you or your staff must dock the recorder or plug the memory card into a computer at the end of the day--so there's an extra step.
• Another disadvantage is the possibility for delay on your end:  The phone delivers immediately, but you or your staff might be late uploading from the hand-held recorder. 
• Once the handheld voice files are uploaded, delivery time is not affected.
• Other notes:
• If you'd like to use a hand-held recorder, we recommend the Olympus DS 5000, but others (such as Sonys, Panasonics, the Olympus DS 2400, etc.) will work. 
• The better recorders have a little card in them (like in the cameras).  With card-enabled recorders you can drop one card off with your secretary to be uploaded while you dictate the next day's work on another card--so your digital recorder isn't tied up in the delivery process.  This would work like the old days . . . where you drop off microcassette tapes and pick up fresh ones.
• These digital handheld recorders can hold many hours of recordings at a time.
• There are expensive ones and cheap ones, and too many people wanted us to fix and maintain them, so we got out of the recorder business:  We don't sell 'em and we don't fix 'em.  Hand-held recorders in all price ranges are easily found online and elsewhere.  (Try Bytescribe.com.)

• OUR SYSTEM HAS TOTALLY ONLINE TRACKING

• PATIENT REPORTS VIRTUALLY NEVER GET LOST

The following stages of your voice file or report or can be observed online in real time:

• Simple voice file, not picked up or begun by transcriptionist
• Voice file picked-up/begun by transcriptionist
• Report with editor (possibly)
• Report delivered to you
• Report changed by you after delivery (possibly)
• Report e-signed by you after delivery (optional)

You can also search for reports for all of time, online, by:

• Patient's name
• Doctor's name
• Date of service
• Report type (H&P, Office Visit)
• A number of other search criteria
• Any combination of the above

Other features:

• You always have the option of reviewing, editing and reprinting your work online. 
• Should the need arise, the voice file is available to you or your assistant, online, for three months, to listen to the dictation while editing your report.
• You can send the work back to the editor to be redone, with your comments to the editor--all online. 

Optional:  Automatically store a backup Microsoft Word document for each patient report in a folder on your hard drive "forever."  (All future changes made online to those reports will cause the latest updated Microsoft Word documents to again be added to the backup folder on your hard drive.)

SECURITY

• YOUR WORK IS SECURELY ENCRYPTED AND HIPAA COMPLIANT

• AN AUDIT TRAIL REVEALS WHO HAS ACCESSED EACH REPORT

All reports have an audit trail, meaning an administrator at your facility can see the name, date, time and computer IP address of each person who touched, changed, listened to or even looked at each document.  You can audit a report and see who accessed each report, what they did and when they accessed it, such as:

• Either the person who dictated on the telephone or the person who sent the voice file from your office
• Each of our transcriptionists
• Each of our editors
• Each of our other staff members who may have had reason to access the report
• Each staff assistant at your end who accessed the report
• Each doctor at your end who accessed a report

• YOU ADMINISTRATOR CAN AUDIT YOUR OWN STAFF MEMBERS' ACTIVITES

This means, instead of following a report and seeing who did what to that report (as illustrated above), your administrator can also audit a staff member and see what reports they went into, what they did, and the IP address of the computer they did it from. 

• ACCESS IS AS SECURE AS YOU MAKE IT   

All access is via login ID and password entry.  The encryption of the contents of the website is phenomenal, but is only as tight as you allow it to be.  Thus, you are encouraged:

• to use complex passwords.
• to change them often.  
• to assign user IDs and passwords to each person in your office having access to your reports, for the auditing trail to be meaningful.
• NOT to share passwords and user IDs among co-workers, for the auditing trail to be meaningful.

REITERATE:  TAKE THE TIME TO ASSIGN IDS AND PASSWORDS TO ALL NEW EMPLOYESS WITH ACCESS TO THESE CONFIDENTIAL REPORTS--DO NOT SHARE ID's AND PASSWORDS.  Ask us how to assign new employees if you need help.

DELIVERY

• FORMS OF DELIVERY (Controlled by the Online Connection):

• Printing:
• Documents can be directed to print to any printer on your network, based on who dictated, the report type, location, and so on. 
• Each doctor could have different print rules for each report and/or satellite office location.
• Example:  A doctor's H&Ps may be printed in the main office and the satellite office, whereas Office Notes would only print at the satellite office.  
• Example:  H&Ps print on green paper and Discharge Summaries print on yellow paper.
• Example:  More commonly, all reports print from the same printer. 
• Example:  Go online and print or fax individual reports on the fly from the printer at home--or from your laptop while out of town. 

• Back-up files (usually Microsoft Word, but also HTML, Text, Rich Text, etc.): 
• Backup files can be directed to specified folders.
• Example:  All reports from the clinic could have a Microsoft Word file backed up on a master server, whereas the reports belonging to each individual doctor could also be backed up on their personal computers. 

• Faxing:
• Can be faxed manually from the system.
• Automatically faxed to referring physician on e-signing or assistant's approval.
• Faxed to yourself without e-signing, or only after e-signing or assistant's approval.

• THREE CONDITIONS FOR DELIVERY:

• Printed: As initially received by you from SmartDoc.  The document is printed (and/or backed up) "right off the rack" as delivered by us, without editing on your part.  These, of course, can be edited later. 

• Printed: After e-signed (and optionally edited) ONLY by the doctor--(no assistant allowed to release or make changes to the report). 

• Printed: Either after e-signed by doctor OR released by an assistant.
  

STATISTICS (and OTHER FEATURES)

AN ADMINISTRATOR CAN TRACK OR GET:

• Review All VERSIONS of all files.  Thus, you can see how each job changed as it went through transcriptionist, editor, and before and after the doctor or assistant made changes
• Add new doctors' assistants (those who may edit reports)
• Update headers.  That is, change the demographic data associated with reports, such as changing the report type, the patient name and date (on top of the second and successive pages), the date of service, and so on.
• Assign priority:  Change reports to (or from) stat
• Add or change patients names, DOB, other demographics on the main patient database (as opposed to just on individual reports)
• Add or change recipients on the referring doctor database.  Change doctors' name spelling, addresses, phone and fax numbers (see DATABASES)
• Allow outside referring physicians to login and view their own patients' reports
• Access the document manager:  Various documents may be stored in the system
• These are usually specifications about the looks of your documents, such as font types, bolding and underlining rules, signature line formats, and so forth.  These are primarily for new transcribers to review before typing your reports for the first time. 
• They may also be used to store "normal" H&Ps, Review of Systems, etc. for the various doctors.
• They may be used to store communications between your office and ours

DATABASES

THERE ARE TWO FUNDAMENTAL TYPES OF DATABASES: 

• PATIENT DEMOGRAPHICS DATABASE 

• Here is where you store all your (correctly-spelled) patient names, medical record numbers, and whatever other non-changinginformation you want to track.
• This is NOT for information that changes, such as Report Type, Date of Service, Duration of Visit, and so forth.  Those are done elsewhere.
• There are several ways to get the patient demographic information into the system.  Recommended:
• At the end of every day, export your patient demographics into our system from your electronic medical records or scheduling program.  Usually, if you can print a patient log, then you can export it.  This is recommended and is fairly easy to learn and do on a daily basis.  About five minutes per day.
• Also, but not recommended ways to get the patient demographic information into the system:
• Only dictate the names, medical record numbers, dates of birth, etc. to the transcriptionist, spelling each name correctly, and the same each time.  The transcriptionists then add the information to our system, as heard.  Not recommended, as it wastes the doctors' (as well as the transcriptionists') time spelling the names and processing other data over and over again.  This way is also prone to errors and inconsistency--such as the doctor spelling a name differently from the way it's already spelled in the system.
• From your office, your staff types the names, medical record numbers, dates of birth, etc. into the system one at a time.  Not recommended because it's very slow, and can be done much more efficiently as a batch (see first entry, above).
• A Totally automated import from your medical records program into our system.  This can be expensive to set up, but ends up being a completely hands-off operation running in the background.  Not recommended, except for hospitals and large practices, as set up is pricey.  (It's set up by a third-party vendor, and thus the cost is beyond our control).
  

• REFERRING PHYSICIAN DATABASE 

• This is for practices (often specialists) who send frequent letters or faxes to their referring physicians. 
• As with the patient databases, these can be uploaded much the same ways as in the list above.  Typically, you would either:
• Import the physician names from your medical records/scheduling software.
• Send us an Excel sheet with their names, addresses, and phone numbers. 
• Purchase pre-made Excel sheets from "The Little Yellow Book" (for faxes), or "The Little Blue Book."  These doctors-only digital phone books are sold by the company by the same name, and enable you to load the addresses and phone numbers of all the doctors in your entire metropolitan area into the system.  For this, you end up spending a few hundred bucks, depending on the size of your city.  This is a good way to get the project done thoroughly.  
• Note:  Ask us if we already have a database set up for your city or metropolitan area.
• You can type them into our system individually.  Usually, this is not for the initial upload of all your doctors, but, rather, only for adding new referring doctors to your existing database. 
  

COST

9.9 cents per line (long and short), as counted in the Courier New 12 point font, billed once per month, or according to your preference.  Also available: 65-character lines.  Call for details.

We feel that once you try us, you're never going to leave, so there's no need for a long-term contract unless, of course, you desire one.

• ALL INVOICES, BOTH PAST AND NOT YET BILLED, VIEWABLE ONLINE.  Logon as an administer and see all your:

• Current Invoices
• Past Invoices
• Payment History
• Future Invoices not yet sent (accumulated charges so far the current month).

• COSTS AND TOTALS CAN BE BROKEN DOWN AND ANALYZED ACCORDING TO:

• Doctors
• Report Types
• Stats/Normals
• Dates
• Patient Names
• and more

Questions? Want to know more? Call us now at 1-888-SmartDoc or click here to send us an e-mail.