Nicholas DiSette said he believed patients at Lawrence Family Practice Center’s new 21,000-square-foot medical clinic would be impressed by what the west Lawrence building had to offer. But he thinks patients might be even more impressed by what it soon won’t have  paper.

DiSette, president of the management company for the medical office, said the building, which opened in late June, would be the first doctor’s office in Lawrence to convert its entire paper medical records to computer files.

Doctors will no longer be carrying clipboards but rather will come equipped with laptop computers when they examine patients. It also means the practice currently is scanning an estimated 8 million pages of medical records in order to have the computer records system fully operational by the end of the year.

“This is the future of medicine,” DiSette said. “We are at the head of the pack on this.”

DiSette said the system should benefit both the business and the patients. He said the computerized records system should cut down on the amount of time patients would have to wait while in the office because files wouldn’t have to be pulled from storage.

The system also is expected to streamline the process used for submitting insurance claims. DiSette said that since the billing office would not have to transcribe handwritten doctor’s notes into the system, insurance companies should receive their bills quicker.

“It’s good for us because it will bring the revenue in quicker, but it also should be good for the patients because they shouldn’t receive as many of those letters saying their bill hasn’t been paid, which really annoys them,” DiSette said.

The new medical building, located just southwest of 18th Street and Wakarusa Drive, is home to six doctors and three physician assistants  Drs. Brad and Carla Phipps, Steve Thompson, Joy Murphy, Gillian Stephens and Mary Vernon, and physician assistants Susan Siemsen, Nicole De Fini and Heather Yates.

The practice began looking for a new office in December 2000 after it severed its contract with Columbia/HCA. The breakup was triggered when the national health-care giant began suffering internal problems related to a federal investigation into the way it handled Medicare payments.

The practice still is involved in a lawsuit filed shortly after the breakup concerning whether Columbia is responsible for a portion of the new building’s cost. DiSette and the practice claim the original agreement called for new office space to built for the doctors.

“Our agreement to separate from Columbia resolved the employment issues, but not everything else,” DiSette said.

DiSette declined to comment further on the lawsuit.

The break-up agreement gave the doctors 18 months to leave their 9,500-square-foot office space at the former Mt. Oread Medical Arts Center at Clinton Parkway and Kasold Drive. DiSette said the group decided to build an office that more than doubled its space because it believed the Lawrence market was in need of more health care services.

“What a lot of people in our business have seemed to forget is that Lawrence is a growing community,” DiSette said. “The growth of the population has far exceeded the number of new physicians for quite a few years.”

DiSette said he was in negotiations to add three doctors to the practice by the end of the year.

The building, which features 44 examination rooms, also is expected to help the doctors handle more patients. Currently, the group sees about 3,000 patients per month. DiSette expects the number to grow to 5,000 a month by the first of the year.

DiSette’s company, Doctors Management Consultants Inc., manages the practices of about 100 doctors in the Midwest. He said the new building with its latest technology should help the doctors adjust to a changing business environment that was marked by smaller reimbursement rates from the government and insurance companies.

“It used to be that in this business you billed $1 and you collected 98 cents,” DiSette said. “Today, you bill $1 and you collect 67 or 68 cents, and that number is probably going to keep going down.

“At 98 cents on the dollars, doctors didn’t need to be very efficient from a business standpoint. But today, they have to be efficient if they want to stay in business. This building was designed with all of that in mind.”