Russ: This is a BusinessMakers WebXtra, a continuation of the discussion with Jack Smyth, President and CEO of Spring Medical Systems. Well, Jack, inform us, let us know how as a patient having digitized and electronic medical records is going to make life better when you visit the doctor.

Jack: Well, at Spring Medical Systems we have a byline that says that we're systematically saving lives and helping doctors to do so. And there are several different ways that we can help a doctor to make sure that the quality of medical care that you're getting is of higher quality. One of the ways is that all the prescriptions that a doctor does after they install electronic health records like our product are all either printed out, faxed or sent electronically to the pharmacy.

Russ: Okay. Instead of the little handwritten, scribbled sheets that you used to take to the pharmacy-

Jack: That nobody can read.

Russ: That's right.

Jack: Absolutely. We have to be careful when we're talking to doctors because we don't want to make fun of their handwriting, but-

Russ: No, we don't want to do that.

Jack: -everybody in the world makes fun of their handwriting because it's very hard to read.

Russ: Well, I wonder if anybody's ever done a study on the mistakes made as a result of that.

Jack: As a matter of fact, they have. And over 12,000 people every year die because of misread prescriptions.

Russ: Ah, Jack, my goodness.

Jack: So we're systematically saving lives every day.

Russ: Okay.

Jack: Another way that our product allows lives to be saved is that all the medical information is available at a glance on 1 screen. Prescription history, procedure history, diagnosis history-so all the different things that a doctor has done with a patient are readily available. And if you think about that thick paper chart that you've seen at all the offices-you know-when you try to flip through that and get any kind of consistent read on what the medical condition is of that patient, it's not easy to do.

Russ: It's sounding like, at least with your company, a whole lot of the design is taking this into consideration-the resistance to change, the way doctors are and so forth. Is that right?

Jack: Absolutely. One of the things that we've tried to do with our product, and some of the others have done it as well in our industry, is to make it very customizable so that the doctor can still practice medicine the way they like to practice medicine and not have the electronic record be intrusive and have to change the way that that doctor practices medicine. And our product, Spring Charts, is designed in a way that allows the doctor to practice medicine the way they like to practice it.

Russ: Okay. And Spring Charts, that's the name of the Spring Medical Systems primary product that a doctor interacts with?

Jack: That's correct. Yep.

Russ: Out of curiosity, are there going to be doctors that use your product but that still might have an administrator there-you know-pulling up this one-page medical record? Or do you know the answer to that yet?

Jack: Well, no, we absolutely do. We have over 650 practices in 47 states that are using our product. All those people have several staff members, and those staff members are doing various things, but they're not doing the same types of things that they were before. There's no pulling of paper charts, there's no losing paper charts. About 4 years ago, I was going down to my cardiologist for a checkup. I had to travel 23 miles to his office, got down there and after 45 minutes of waiting, I went up to the front desk and I said, "What's going on?" The person behind the front desk said, "Mr. Smyth, I don't know how we can tell you this, but we can't find your chart. You're going to have to reschedule."

Russ: This is a personal experience that you had.

Jack: Personal experience.

Russ: Oh, my God.

Jack: Now that cardiologist is now installing my product, but it really upset me because I had to reschedule and come back, and I'm a busy guy. I'm doing a lot of things, and that didn't sit well with me.

Russ: But that probably makes sense. He probably couldn't see you without your chart.

Jack: Absolutely not.

Russ: He would know nothing about-I mean-they don't remember. They're seeing too many patients, so whoo!. That's one of the problems that this initiative will eliminate.

Jack: Hundred percent.

Russ: I dislike the fact that any time I go to a physician, say a specialist, that was referred to me by somebody else, I start all over completely. I get a blank piece of paper that's been copied about a hundred times and answer the same 60 questions one more time. Is there any sharing electronically that's going to be proposed as a result of this?

Jack: Absolutely. It's part of the stimulus package, but even ahead of the stimulus package, there's a group called the Electronic Health Records Association. It's a trade group of 42 companies that represent over 90 percent of the installed EHRs in the United States. And we've been working on interaction formats, so that we can send information from one EHR product to another, so that a doctor, a primary care doctor, can take certain parts of your record and send it through what's called a CCD, continuity of care document, to the other specialist, so the specialist can then receive it and if they have an electronic health records, it'll automatically go in their record and set up a chart for you in their system. Or if they don't have electronic records, they can print it out and put it into their paper-based system, but at least they have the basic information that's coming from the primary care physician, so you don't have to refill out all those forms when you go to the specialist.

Russ: Okay. Well, that right there would be a huge improvement. It's a basic step, but jeez, even that would be cool. I think when I start paying attention to administrators in doctor's offices, it always seems to me like about 90 percent of the time they're-they're wrestling with insurance providers and doing all of that sort of work. Now, theoretically, all that might change, but does the initiative of bringing forward electronic health records address that as well?

Jack: Yeah, there's 2 ways that those kinds of problems are addressed with electronic health records. One is that the documentation for the visit with the patient is much easier to read, much more complete because there are things like templates that are used that will provide the common information that the doctor needs to provide for that patient with that condition. And then in addition to that, there is the information that the insurance companies may want to check on. Often the insurance companies will audit a certain case. And when somebody has electronic health records, the information is so better organized that the insurance company has a much easier time auditing, and they tend to not come back to those doctors again because they feel confident that that doctor knows what he's doing and has all the right information. So sometimes, and often, the reimbursements come through more quickly from the insurance companies because the insurance company knows this doctor has electronic health records.

Russ: Cool. Cash flow's always important. It would be important to doctors as well.

Jack: It's a huge, huge problem with doctors today.

Russ: You bet. Well, Jack, in this whole arena of electronic health records, even my creativity goes a little bit wild. There's got to be all sorts of efficiencies beyond what you've already shared.

Jack: Absolutely. Uh-as people have read, the stimulus package has identified monies for electronic health records because eventually it's going to save a lot of money for all of us in health insurance costs and health costs. And a couple of ways that it's going to do that is number 1, it's going to eliminate duplicate tests. For example, if you go in to a primary care doctor, and he takes an x-ray, and then you go into a specialist 4 days later, and that specialist needs that same x-ray, if he needs it right away, he's not going to try to get it from the other doctor. He's going to just do it again. And with products like Spring Charts, our electronic health records product, that information can be transferred from the primary care doctor to the specialist, so that the x-ray image or the x-ray report can be there right in front of the specialist when he needs it.

Russ: Eliminating duplication.

Jack: Eliminating duplication, a lot of extra costs.

Russ: Cool. Is there more?

Jack: There is. Another thing that's already started happening will happen even more is that everybody's heard the malpractice insurance is just huge today and-and the documentation done on the visits is going to be much better, and it's going to be easier to defend a doctor through a malpractice case with better documentation.

Russ: Oh, well, that makes sense as well. Well, Jack, I really appreciate you sharing this with us. But before I let you go, I know quite a bit about your background. You've been in technology quite a bit-Compaq Computers, HP and so forth. You're kind of one of these entrepreneurs that end up leading companies like Spring Medical Systems. You must feel like boy, it doesn't get any better than what you're getting ready to face right now when the government lights up your market.

Jack: Well, Russ, I've started 5 companies previously to Spring Medical, and I've never had an opportunity like this where as long as we are there and we have a good product and it meets the requirements of the government, we're going to do extremely well, and that's very, very exciting.

Russ: Well, plus the market is just gigantic too, right?

Jack: It's huge. It's huge. As I mentioned earlier, only 4 percent of doctors are using electronic health records, and 96 percent are not, and there's close to 400,000 doctors that are in the United States, so that's a huge number.

Russ: Cool. Well, I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.

Jack: I enjoyed it. Thanks, Russ.

Russ: And that wraps up this discussion with Jack Smyth, President and CEO of Spring Medical Systems. And that wraps up this BusinessMakers WebXtra.