Visit http://www.nursepractitionerbusinessowner.com/gettingstartedinpracticecall.htm

Seems these days everyone has some sort of smart phone. We use them to manage our lives, keep us organized, keep in contact, share, and function better in the exam room (“second brain”).

As a long time Palm OS user, I opted for the PalmPre last year. There were several reasons, the main one being my available networks are Verizon and Sprint. This past week, I was thrilled when Epocrates came out as a native app for the Pre. That got me thinking…which SmartPhone/PDA  are you using, and what medical apps do you have on your phone?

Once a month, members of Nurse Practitioner Business Owner™ (NPBO™ ) have the opportunity to gather together to ask questions (and get answers!), brainstorm and just plain network.  So many ideas come out of these gatherings, that I find it’s one of my favorite activities.

Our next Q&A is Monday February 8th at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern. Members can check their email or in the forum for call in information.

If you’d like to participate and are not yet a member, consider joining us @ www.NursePractitionerBusinessOwner.com™.

Members of Nurse Practitioner Business Owner™ will have a chance to ask any question you have during our next monthly Q&A call which is scheduled for Monday January 11, 2010. This benefit is exclusive to NPBO™ members.

This is your chance to ask any question to have about start up and growing your business or practice. Perhaps you have questions about:

• Marketing
• Operations
• Practice management
• Coding and Billing
• Credentialing
• Vendors
• Collaborators
• or anything else that has to do with your practice.

Even when you don’t have questions, this is a great call to be on. You can learn, brainstorm and get ideas from your colleagues, give feedback to one another and get the support that you may need.

Check your weekly Members Only email or the Members Only forum for the access information.

Not yet a member? You can see if NPBO™ is for you at www.NursePractitionerBusinessOwner.com

Running a practice takes a lot of time. In an effort to keep your focus on your patients we’ve come up with a few time saving tips to help you stay on track.

• Use templates for standard documentation. You can just substitute any changes. This is especially useful when you are doing documentation online.




• Labs: I’ve found this particularly help. I have a lab results sheet that has the most commonly asked about results and tells what the numbers means. For examples, the lipid profile and diabetes labs. On the flip side of the page, it has tips that patients can use to correct their lipids and glucose. It includes space for me to include other labs and instructions.




• We have a referral phone list for the most common providers we refer to. Its bright orange. Patients get a copy of it with the phone number circled. It saves lots of calls to our office.

Post your time savings tips below.

One of the things I do a lot of Facebook, is share resources of business building tools as well as clinically relevant tools that I use on a regular basis, or that have been recommened and look like they would be helpful.

I recently realized that if you are not on Facebook, or if you are, and you are not my “friend”, you can’t see them.

So here is my invitation to join me on Facebook and share in the resources.

You’ll find me at http://profile.to/barbaraphillips/ . When requesting “friendship”, please include a note being an NP or NP-friendly.

As a busy Nurse Practitioner, I am delighted when I come across tools that save me time and energy. And that is especially true of tools that are online. My offices, both at home and the clinic, are connected to the internet. I will often pull up something that will help me with patient teaching right there in the exam room. While many resources require a purchase, there are some amazing resources available that are free.

Here are just a few site the help me explain visually various concerns that patients may have:

• http://www.InnerBody.com
• http://www.VisibleBody.com
• http://www.VisualDxHealth.com – for skin conditions.

If you are a member at NPBO, you’ve heard me say many times that “Google is my friend”.  I’m always learning something new and finding new resources through them. Here is one that I just came across. It’s for the scholar in all of us…Google Scholar. What is it? Taken directly from Google:

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.

While I’m on the topic of Google, they have launched Google Health. It’s a way for patients to keep their records on line, locate providers (though the link says “doctors”, but one can search all sorts of providers), and look up information about their medications and conditions. There are several pharmacies and electronic prescribing systems that are partnered with Google Health (for example Allscripts, which is available to all providers for e-prescribing).

These are just a few of many resources that are available to you and your patients. Feel free to share the tools you use in your office below. I’ll compile them into a pdf document and make it available for download.

Just a heads up if you are interested.

Nurse Practitioner Business Owner is getting ready to send out it’s first issue of ProgressNotes, a weekly newsletter with additional tips and information for the NP business owner. Signing up for ProgressNotes will get you a free copy of “Business Ideas for NP Entrepreneurs” as well as enroll you in the weekly drawing. Interested?

Visit www.NursePractitionerBusinessOwner.com

After 8 months, it’s live.

NPBO is open for business. I know in the past week several of you have attempted to sign up and could not…now you can. All the safeguards are in place. There is still much to add, but then that will be an ongoing process. For more information about the site, please refer to the post about a New Resource or better yet, visit Nurse Practitioner Business Owner.

The following forms have been sent in to be shared with other NPs and PAs in clinical practice.

You will need to have access to Microsoft Word and Excel, or download www.OpenOffice.org for a free office suite of software that can read and edit all the MS office documents. This program will also read and produced pdf documents as well. (We use this at my practice – works well). If you need a PDF reader, you can get one from Adobe.

I’ve placed the forms into a zipped file, which will download to your computer. It’s still large (almost 4mb), so if you have dialup, it will take a bit of time. Click ClinicalForms to download.

Thanks to our colleagues for their contributions:

From Venda Kelley, NP

• Encounter/Exam Form (excel)
• Coumadin Flow Sheet (excel)
• Consultation Request (excel)
• Animal Bite Form (word)
• Crash Cart Checklist (word)
• Health Maintenance Record (excel)
• TB Assessment for those with positive PPD (excel)

From Joseph W. Reis, NP

• Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale  (pdf)
• Drug Hx (pdf)
• Psychiatric Intake Intake  (pdf)
• Mood Disorders Questionnaire  (pdf)
• Mood Chart (word)
• Progress Note  (pdf)
• Self Report  (pdf)
• South Oaks Gambling Screen  (pdf)

From Christine Smith, NP

• Adult Visit Note
• Pediatric Visit Note
• Procedures & Laceration Repair, I&D, Nebulizer Treatment

This folder will be updated as we add more forms to the mix. Eventually, I’ll put them into a pdf document for easier browsing.  If you have forms you’d like to share, please contact me on www.NPBusiness.ORG or send them, as an attachment to barbaracphillips (at) gmail (dot) com.