I sign my name no less than 200 times a day on average when I include patient charts, prescriptions, and business checks.

This does not include my child’s homework and report cards. Nor does it count the volumes of patient documentation primarily necessitated by our federal government and medicolegal concerns.

I also do a few work and school excuses, fill out insurance forms, and write a few thank you notes to patients.

Beyond that, there are the inpatient hospital notes and operative reports I must generate and sign.

As you can see, I spend a large portion of my day on secretarial work. In fact, I have a large callus on my right middle finger, and occasionally suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome.

Another person might make the case that I have a worker’s compensation claim. Go ahead and argue that to Medicare. When you are the boss and business owner, with a family to feed and bills to pay, you keep right on working.

That’s part of the reason many physicians are reluctant to accept computer-based patient records.

Certainly, there must be some grade school teachers just shaking their heads somewhere.

Just MHO.