Guest columnist Brian O’Neill is president and CEO of Office Ally, which offers providers a full complement of revenue cycle management services, including a patient portal, electronic health records, a practice management system, a clearinghouse and a billing service.

One of the greatest professional challenges and business decisions physicians find themselves confronting today is the conversion of their office and systems to electronic health records (EHRs). While once found only in the most technologically savvy physician offices and viewed by many as a ‘nice to have’ luxury, EHRs are quickly becoming a ‘need to have’ in medical offices across the country. And with good reason!

Physicians often are portrayed as latter-day Luddites. However, that’s an urban myth, according to Peter Henderson of PatientKeeper, a Boston-based health information system provider.

In the age of social networking -- as if Facebook, Twitter and other social media don’t offer enough cyber-information overload --  the newest player is doctor and hospital rating sites. More than 30 such rate-your-doctor websites exist today, including Healthgrades.com and RateMDs.com, as well as more general consumer guides such as Yelp.com and Angielist.com, which is more known for rating plumbers than clinicians.

This is a guest column written by David B. Mandell, a principal of the financial consulting firm O’Dell Jarvis Mandell LLC and Carole Foos, who works as a CPA and tax consultant at the firm. 

For many of you, April 15^th (or April 18^th in 2011) is a painful day. That’s because it’s that day you realize you spend between 40% and 50% your working hours for the year laboring for the IRS and your state when you consider income, capital gains, Medicare, self-employment and other taxes.