15th Annual Physician-Computer Connection Symposium
You are invited to attend the 15th annual Physician-Computer Connection Symposium, a 2 1/2 day program defining the latest issues and advances in the direct physician use of healthcare information systems and technology. National experts in clinical computing and healthcare information technology will present their views in a highly interactive forum, which allows you to participate. Target Audience: Physicians, CMOs, CMIOs, CIOs Healthcare Executives, Nurses, Clinicians, Vendors and Consultants.

Verbal prescribing in general practice consultations
The data showed that doctors' utterances, occurring at an early stage of the consultations, signalled the prescribing decision and eventual outcome of the consultation. The concept of 'verbal prescriptions' is used to describe these utterances of the GPs, and facilitates an understanding of how prescribing decisions are routinely achieved. Prescribing decisions can occur in the relatively early stages of the consultation, and both prior to and independently of the CDSS.

Growing Availability of Clinical Information Technology in Physician Practices
During the first half of the decade, physician access to practice-based clinical information technology (IT) grew significantly, according to findings from the national Community Tracking Study Physician Survey. The survey asked physicians about the use of IT in their practice for five clinical activities: 1) Obtaining information about treatment alternatives or recommended guidelines; 2) Exchanging clinical data and images with other physicians; 3) Accessing patient notes, medication lists or problem lists; 4) Generating preventive treatment reminders for the physician?s use; and 5) Writing prescriptions.

Do EHRs save time?
Besides adding time to the workday, EHRs will require significant cultural and work habit changes, especially in the exam room, doctors say. There, the computer could be a dominant third party, said Dr. Terry Stein of Kaiser Permanente, unless managers pay careful attention to exam room geography before deploying an EHR system.