Lyris: The first place I look when I don’t know something

Francis “Sam” Santschi, JD AAOE Membership Council Chair Diana Kruse MD

If you are like me, you are seldom Reaganing* while at work. We are counted on to be knowledgeable, have answers and yet we often need help. Our role is to master the ever increasing burdens of complexity and responsibility in the running of an Orthopaedic practice. (Now and in the future, we’ll need to hopefully find a way to link our compensation, and framing the debate to reflect, that last sentence rather than linking our pay to the shrinking physician’s average compensation in the way that a lot of us do now. But I digress.) Recently, my doctor decided to tiptoe into the EHR/EMR issue again. She had heard that our only in town competition was getting one. Despite her natural aversion and tech phobia, she now wanted to revisit it. I had thought the issue had been resolved long ago and so I had watched the ongoing listserv chatter about it with detached amusement. Naturally, it was the second week of August, hardly the time to start planning, let alone, researching EMR’s with October fast approaching. But, we are paid to drop everything and set off on any quixotic mission that rises to the fore so I had to come up with something fast.

What’s the first place I looked? Lyris. (But wait, what in the world is Lyris?) It is an amazing and valuable benefit included in our membership that is a searchable and sortable archive of all listserv posts dating back to March of 2011! I went to the internet machine and accessed our site at www.aaoe.net and followed these simple steps to Lyris:

Click the Member Login box Login using your AAOE Username Enter your password The MyAccount page appears Click on Member Services Scroll down to the AAOE Listserv section and click on the Lyris link Click on the AAOE Discussion List A prompt requesting you to sign in will appear Enter your email address that is used for the Listserv and clock ok Enter your password for Lyris (If you have never accessed Lyris, enter your email address that is used for the Listserv and click ok. You will be prompted by the system to enter a password, which you obviously don’t have, so enter “AAOE”, which will prompt an error message in the lower right corner “email password”. Click on that and a link will be sent to your email that allows you to “reset” your password for Lyris.) Listserv Archive messages appear Once successfully logged in, I clicked the search bar and entered “EHR” as a Lyris search. Instantly, over a hundred results came up for me to click on and review their contents. I even found my teasing “we’re sitting this one out.” message, sigh. Within the Lyris search results, I found surveys compiled by several individuals over the course of a 6-9 month period. There were checklists and questionnaires to use or customize into RFI’s. I then searched under EMR and there were over a hundred more posts including a long thread about “choosing not to go to EMR” to review. Also in there were comments from folks about the pluses and minuses of EHR/EMR, implementation horror stories, strategies, rants, tips etcetera. In short, I had a really reasonable idea of what vendors to approach and why and ideas for implementation as well. This was all in a matter of minutes!

So I contacted a few, scheduled an on-line demo within days and in less than a week; we had several companies nipping at our heels, wanting our business. So, did we get an EMR system? Well, let’s just say, my doctor went into an empty exam room shortly after the first online demo for a lie down. Haven’t heard a word since…Well, she did finally get up.

So, do yourself a favor the next time you’re thinking, “Gee, there was a thread a long time ago on the Listserv about…” and head out to Lyris and see what is readily available. Or if you need a laugh, just search under the word “rant”. At last count, there were seventy eight hits from that search.

Is Lyris perfect? No, but rest assured, our excellent AAOE staff and hardworking Committee’s are testing a redesign of our website that will eventually allow us members access to listserv archival material and other informative content designed to help us all with a few mouse clicks directly from our website. The more collectively AAOE knows what it knows and can bring forward easily and quickly, the more valuable our memberships become and so do we.

*Reaganing---“Making it through a full 24-hours, without a single misstep is called “Reaganing,” after our former President. The only other people who have ever done it: Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch, and, no judgment, Saddam Hussein." - Jack Donaghy 30 Rock TV show