Endorsements

Turbo-Doc is a phenomenal program. My patients pictures, operative notes, operative photos, telephone calls are all immediately available on my 3 + pound notebook computer. This replaces over one thousand pounds of charts and about 100 square feet of wall/floor space. No more trying to find charts or re-file them. I can finish charts at home at my leisure.

Turbo-Doc has allowed my office in Beverly Hills and New York to move to a paperless office. Which ever coast I am on all charts of over 4000 patients are immediately available on my notebook computer.

What I like best are the continuous stream of refinements through out the year and not having to wait for a major upgrade. Most refinements are user initiated and therefore very helpful.

What is more important if that is possible, is that the programmer is one of us, a fellow actively practicing surgeon physician who understands our changing needs. The program is thus constantly being upgraded and adapted to medicines changing needs by someone who is intimately knowledgeable about what is needed to make the charting process easier for us and compliant with what the insurance companies are demanding.

I can't tell you how much I use many parts of the program. As an example, the RX portion of the program is saving me tons of time. I have cut exact instructions from the PDR like "clean face and apply thinly...." to make it more helpful for the patient. TurboDoc automatically adds a note to the plan saving me more time. And I don't have to print the Rx if I give a telephone Rx, I simply select the medication in TurboDoc and it automatically adds the medication and directions to the note, saving me a lot of typing and writing on my part.

Also I have a tendency to call patients 2 to 3 weeks after skin lasers to see how they are doing. I don't have to pull 10 or 20 charts make notes and refile, what a pain. I just quickly pull them up on the screen, make a quick note with a date and time stamp and I have an up to date chart with good medical care documentation.

When my week is so complicated trying to keep everything under control Turbodoc has gone a long way to ease my stress level. How many of us have bought very expensive programs only to find that they are written by people who have no knowledge of how we need to interact with patients and the computer. Turbo-Doc is the quintessential charting program offered at a price we can all live with.

I think that you should advertise more that the program increases revenues to a busy practice without increasing the time involved. I know that I have changed how I bill for an office visit as I am able to easily document what I have actually done. In the past, I down coded as I was not documenting all of the service I was providing.

Another area, I have been able to get my consultation letter out to the primary before the patient had dressed and left the exam room. This relieves my office staff of this added work load. I used to have a part timer just to do the typing from all of my letters. Now I have the letters done and have coded the visit and faxed the letter in same time I did before, but now I have saved the time of the dictation and the money for another employee. Obviously, I love the system.

Turbo-Doc is an excellent EMR program. It is simple to use and eminently customizable. The tutorial is one of the best I have seen for any computer program helping the user to become proficient with a few weeks. Dictation of our notes is a thing of the past. Our notes are on the patient chart within 15 minutes of seeing the patient. The printed output is absolutely fantastic!

The scanning module is a must. It allows one to scan in a hand-written note if you happen to forget your laptop or to add x-ray or consultant reports to the record. The staff at Turbo-Doc have been very helpful about additions to the program which help the end-user. I wish we had started using Turbo-Doc years ago.

WHAT A TERRIFFIC PRODUCT!!!! I have a mobile office, working in five different clinics (renting space) and operating in three different hospitals. My “main office” is my home. I’m proud to have a totally paperless office! My son uses the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner to “speed scan” two-sided documents in a flash! That’s why I rely on the Review Chart feature so much.

I have three Fujitsu T-4010 touch screen laptops and use a Linksys wireless hub at each location.

We have adapted Turbo-Doc for use in the SICU at the University of Missouri. The ability to bring forward the previous day's entries and modify pertinent changes without re-creating the entire record is extremely helpful.

M. H. Metzler, MD
General Surgery & Surgery Critical Care
University of Missouri

I have been using Turbo-Doc since May 26, 1998 to complete all my office charts. Initially I used Turbo-Doc in combination with Dragon Naturally Speaking voice dictation. Over the ensuing year I have gradually switched to using Turbo-Doc almost exclusively with a Fujitsu PEN computer or my laptop. (While Naturally Speaking offers some increased ability to generalize the medical record -- it carries with it the 5-10% error rate in its current versions which can be extremely frustrating to new users with a large volume of dictations.)

Since the switch, I have saved almost a 1/2 time equivalent in transcription services. (Our practice hopes to save even more when my associates begin to use Turbo-Doc more.) At first things took me somewhat longer to complete all my "stepped up" documentation. I am now able to complete much more extensive office evaluations, formal preoperative notes, and orders in less time. I am also able to be much more comprehensive and thorough in my documentation than I was before. In the past I was way under coding my office visits/consultations because the documentation was so difficult. -- I am now on par with other specialists. My post operative brief operative notes and orders take me much less time than before; I now have time to get a little more rounding done between cases. As an extremely busy general/vascular surgeon caught in the time and dollar squeeze as everyone else the assistance of such a WONDERFUL program as Turbo-Doc has been enormous.

Dr. Lyle Hunt has been extremely responsive to suggestions about the needs of this user -- as I am sure he has with his other users. We have worked together to continually update and improve Turbo-Doc in way some of the big expensive programs out there never do. I believe with the type of responsiveness that he has shown me, that he works on this program nearly everyday. It continues to be more powerful and friendly.

My formally non-computer oriented transcriptionist and staff really love the ability to have immediate access to all of my patient information without all the lost time searching for charts. This has made my posting staff's ability to justify procedures to insurance companies much easier. My staff has even convinced the other 3 doctors in my office to switch to Turbo-Doc. We have been transitioning this over time by using a transcriptionist to complete portions of each record. While they are all fine surgeons, none of them is particularly computer literate, but they see the advantages to such a system in the office.

As always,

Karl P. Riggle, M.D.