Lee's Blog

A GREAT day in Aggieland!

Ags beat t.u. this afternoon 38-30 and there was not only celebration in Aggieland over the victory, BUT also Franchioni "resigned" as football coach after "accepting" a buyout offer on his remaining 5 year contract!

TWO GREAT HAPPENINGS!  I assume tomorrow the next Aggie football coach will be announced!  Let's hope it isn't Tubberville from Auburn!  HE IS BORING!

Bow Tie Timing update

My Bow Tie tying is getting better!  As I got dressed to go to Cracker Barrell for Thanksgiving lunch, I timed myself in tying my bow tie!  Start to excellent finish.....2 1/2 minutes!  I will keep trying to break the two minute mark!....but hey, it beats 2 1/2 HOURS just trying to tie it the first time!!!!!!  Biggest decision now is which one of my bow ties to wear!!!!!  As Barbie says, I need an Excel spreadsheet!

Week #1 is over!

Week #1 is over and we survived!  Yes, 3 days of training and two days of being on our own!  Did we make mistakes?  Yes, especially me on the charting package, but with every mistake I know I learned something....I won't make that mistake again!  This week will be a short week so that should be beneficial!  I have an unlimited support package....and the support desk in Atlanta, Ga is FANTASTIC!  Any time there is a problem or concern, we can fill out a web-based support ticket and typically within 5 minutes there is someone either calling us back or online to our system fixing the problem.  We sent in our first group of electronic insurance claims on Tuesday of last week.  Two days later one of those claims was paid and on Friday a second claim was paid!

Check back and see how this week goes!

Training is OVER....tomorrow we are on our own!

We are finished with Day 3 of training.  I think things came together today and we got at least one day of work on the computer finished!  It was still stressful but much less so today than yesterday.  No more paper appointment book!  That is now history!  We are now as paperless as we can get until I buy the digital xray software that goes on top of the practice managment software.  I have never dealt with a company that has such great tech support!  They work primarily via email requests.  There were 5 or 6 times today that we had a problem (3 I encountered after Deb left).  I would submit the online email request and typically with 4-5 minutes "someone" from Atlanta was on my computer doing a minor fix or calling me back to work me through an issue that I didn't know how to resolve!  How many times I have set on the phone for an hour or more just trying to get into tech support centers!

I have them backing up my data files every evening after we leave.  No leaving this to chance!!!!  When they back it up, it is placed in THREE different locations across TWO different time zones and on 6 different hard drives!  Should anything happen to my server, they will give me a IP address and my computers will then point to their remote location until the server is replace/repaired!

Did I say tomorrow, the rest of the week and the rest of the month would be easy?  NO!  But I am prepared!  I went to Walmart tonight and made a purchase for the office.......

Training Day 2 is over.....

All I can say is that I am glad it is over!  The converted data arrived later than we expected and it threw everything behind schedule.  It was OVERLOAD OVERLOAD OVERLOAD today.  However, thinking back to 1996 when I did the first conversion it was the same way!  It will take 2-3 weeks of getting the kinks out of it and retraining my thinking on how some things will work.  Yes, it is always nice to have the status quo.....but change always brings improvements....and we just haven't seen the full impact yet of all the improvements of this software!  Check back December and see how my thinking has changed!

First day of training ..... is OVER!

For those of you that missed a previous blog...today was the first day of training on a new dental software that I purchased.  We had a great trainer, Deb Shelton.  She knew just how much to present before stopping and letting us play and practice what she had taught us.  Today was a patient-free day and was all training.  It was exausting and at times I know it felt overwhelming but everyone survived!  Well almost everyone survived I think.  When we drove up to the office today there was a pidgeon on the front parking lot that was sick or wounded.  Amber is a very sensitive person when it comes to animals and she took it upon herself to contact Dr. Martindale's office.  They said they would look at the pidgeon and see what they could do to nurse it back to health.  We may never know the outcome but I know Dr. Martindale will do everything possible to help this wounded bird!

At the end of the day, we grabbed a photo of all the ladies ..... just to prove that everyone of the humans survived!  Tomorrow we go live with our converted data and with a light patient schedule.  Then we will see just how much we have learned AND retained!  I hope everyone gets a good night's sleep and is well rested for tomorrow!  The online support staff in Atlanta, Ga was awesome in taking care of some minor questions/problems we encountered.  I could not have asked for a better trainer than Deb Shelton!  Thank you Deb for making today go by effortless and for being so patient!

District 50 Toastmaster Conference

The Waltons and the Claytons attended the Fall District 50 Conference this weekend.  We had a great time!  Saturday, while the conference was in progress, Carolyn and Barbie went to different scrapbook stores.  As Jeff and I said....that wasn't our thing!  Saturday night was the Humorous Speech Contest.  We laughed and laughed at the 7 different speeches.  Jeff and I had the top three finishers, although we had second and third place reversed!  Saturday night was the more formal dinner.  I think Jeff got started with the "Mutt and Jeff" saying.  So here we are.....Mutt and Jeff...and you can figure out which is which!

My FIRST Tattoo!!!

Many of you know my love of Google and Apple.....well not the Apple Computer but the IPod!  I am a member of a local stock investing club....the Sherman 20 Club.  This club has been in existance since about 1967.  I joined in 1991.  We presently meet at the Denison Library on the second Thursday of each month.  We limit our membership to 20 MEN (sorry ladies...no women are allowed).  I am President this year (my second time in 18 years) of the Sherman 20 Club.  We have owned Google and Apple for sometime although when I had to miss earlier in the year some members decided to sell our Google position at 475.  Last month, my motion was to buy back into Google with a 100 share purchase.  That 100 share motion was a little much for some members (names will not be released) but we did buy 50 shares at $623/share.  Wednesday it closed at $741 although Thursday it got hit and closed at $693.  In honor of Google (and Apple), I had my first tattoo placed on my hand in honor of those two stocks.  For those of you that watch Jim Cramer on CNBC you will understand why the hand tattoos!  Here is a photo of the tattoos!

If thse photos show up as small as I am seeing them as I prepare the blog, I will need to come back and see if I can figure out how to make them larger but try clicking on each photo and see if it will enlarge.

My tatto sylist was Tattoo Amber! and Cindy was the one that found the tattoo's in Sherman

Software conversion......brings FEAR!

My how those two simple words .....Software Conversion......bring fear into a person's life!  That is what will be happening at my office next week.  This will be the third AND LAST piece of dental practice managment software.  The first software was installed in 1981 and served us well until 1997.  Y2K was lurking around the corner at us and my software was not going to work past 12/31/1999 so the decision was made to convert the data and move to the newest and greatest software ....  NDC Exact Dental.  About 4 years after the 1997 conversion that company was sold to another company...it was abosorbed by another...and on and on....but for the past 7 years there has been no support for this software I am presently using.  The US Government in it's wisdom decided that all medical/dental/chiropractor providers would now need a new ID number called a National Provider Number.  My Tax ID or DEA numbers were no longer sufficient in themselves!  Guess what....my NDC software does not support NPI numbers so as of next June I will no longer be able to submit insurance claims electronically.  Enter software purchase #3 called Media Dent out of Atlanta, Ga.   Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we are having a trainer come in from Atlanta to train everyone in the office on how to use this software.  Believe me, to get the full use of this software...you need the three days of training....and wish they could stay and work for a week!  The software is installed at the office and ready to go.  This software has all the bells and whistles to make a dental office more productive with our time.  There is one additional add-on software that can be added at any point in the future.....digital xrays!  I probably will add that final touch around March or April 2008.

So Monday through Wednesday, yes the words software conversion WILL bring fear....but in the end it will make life much simpler and easier for me as well as my employees....Amber, Cindy, Casey!  On Monday.....say a little prayer for me!