Sunday, November 18, 2012

THE EHR PROGRAM YOU NEED

 
 
 
 
 
THIS JUST MIGHT BE THE EHR
PROGRAM YOU NEED TO NAVIGATE
OBAMACARE REQUIREMENTS
 
"The Obama administration maintains that pushing hospitals and physicians to adopt electronic medical records will improve efficiency, increase patient safety, and reduce health care costs. But as more providers transition to EMRs, there has been an unexpected consequence: Billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers, and patients. EMRs may ultimately make health care provision easier, but they also make the process simpler for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, regardless of whether they provide additional care. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, cloning, upcoding, and overcoding from template-generated records are some of the abuses that have resulted from the change to EMRs," states Kenneth Artz, a freelance reporter for The Heartland Institute based in Dallas, Texas.
 
Whether these noises over EMR requirements are valid, or not, required EMR is here to stay.  We just have to navigate through the process, learn from our mistakes, and move forward along the internet  highway to a bright new future for practicing medicine.  I believe and trust that using EMRs will actually help the medical community deliver much better quality care than ever before.  Not withstanding the stimmulis incentive, the costs, both monetarily and logistically, of initiating an all inclusive EMR  look to be absolutely cumbersome and downright scary to what I call many chart-in-hand "Paper Physicians" who might actually be thinking of retiring rather than attempting the big switch.
 
EXAMPLES WE READ ABOUT 
 
Dr. Samuel Berkman planned to retire from his hematology practice once medical records went digital: “I figured I didn’t want to be bothered with this. For many people in my generation, we didn’t grow up on computers. The whole thing kind of scared me.” ..........until he found an EMR Program that enabled him to accomplish the whole transition and without paying a dime, he got his $18,000 stimulus check and “a new lease on life” for his practice.

Dr. David Wyatt manages his three facility practice in northern Atlanta with a flexible EMR, allowing him to access patient information anytime, anywhere.  "Our practice consists of three offices in the northern Atlanta area.  I have a total of 10 staff including two physicians, 5 medical assistants, a business manager/partner as well as a registered dietician who all access patient charts.  We deal with "walking-well" patients who are seeking weightloss, dietary, exercise and/or metabulism consultation. We see 95% adults. I have used Nextgen as well as PIVOT EMR systems in my previous work and when this business venture began, I wanted to find a system that could be customized to this particular type of practice, have low up-front costs, have easy set up, as well as a responsive support team. There are Bariatric (weight loss) specific EMRs on the market – costing between $7,500 and $25,000. But these were not internet based (ASP) and we did not want to maintain a server nor take on the issues of patient data safety and maintaining this data. We had the issue of patients needing to go in between offices and their charts not being accessible except by fax. Now all our charts as well as notes, medications, phone messages, and schedules are available though our EMR at any location. We have had great feedback from patients. In addition, our EMR helped with our ability to train new employees and establish a standard protocol for all the offices."

After trying out another EMR, Dr. Andrew Bronstein turned to this EMR for his Las Vegas surgical practice and quickly discovered more than a great price tag. "This is absolutely an invaluable software product, from how easy it is to implement to how robust it is compared to other EMRs that cost tens of thousands of dollars."  He was was originally looking for any EMR that could manage his surgical practice: “I had invested in an electronic health record system after paying approximately $60-70,000 in hardware and software. The install team didn’t show up on day two, and then I found out that the company went bankrupt."

This system, however, was very impressive as he went ‘Live in 5’ minutes and because it is an internet based system that they are changing at all times, he didn't have to buy a license fee for one year and then update it every year.

The system all of these physicians found to be robust, end-user friendly, malliable, simple to use and highly cost-effective is called Practice Fusion! You'll immediately appreciate the benefits of using Practice Fusion's free (YES....FREE), web-based solution. Their user-friendly electronic health records system can be activated in less than five minutes, eliminating the difficult conversion process that has become industry standard. Practice Fusion stands out in a marketplace dominated by expensive, complicated and ineffective EHR systems. We wholeheartedly recommend PRACTICE FUSION every time we get to all of our clients and cannot wait to see their fears fade away and excitement take it place as they begin to use it!

See how Healthcare Business Management can guide you into the future of EMR with our recommendations and experience.