In this increasingly paperless age, it seems relatively strange that the health care industry has taken so long to fully embrace chiropractic EHR. While other industries have long turned their backs on costly print jobs and cumbersome paper files, physicians across the country continue to work with boxes worth of documentation, and the transmission of data still involves a fax machine with a questionable connection.

Some regions of the country are more guilty of this than others — particularly more rural areas where computer literacy may not be as highly prioritized. That is perhaps why one hospital in Maine has sought to change how we view health care management in a digital age.

Healthcare IT News recently covered MaineGeneral Medical Center's Alfond Center for Health in Augusta, which has touted itself as a "paper-last" medical facility. In that vein, most of the promotion for the $312 million clinic has taken place online via social media. 

As for the day-to-day operations within the hospital itself, "most data capture and retrieval is electronic" according to the source.

CIO Danny Burgess explained that the Alfond Center for Health represents a combination of existing and new technologies, including the inpatient and ambulatory EHRs currently implemented within the MaineGeneral network. This model is not only more sustainable — it also conveys to potential patients that the hospital is a leader in innovation.

The new hospital has created quite a buzz largely because of the willingness of its administration to embrace and experiment with new mediums of technology. This could provide valuable insight for practitioners who have been reluctant to transition to chiropractic EMR software. Creating a "paper-last environment" can free you from the burden, confusion and potential security issues posed by in-house paper records, freeing you to focus on what you do best: Caring for your patients.