I meant to post this a long time ago and never got around to it. Although, I think it was one of the really interesting announcements at HIMSS. Here’s a portion of the press release from Quest about their EHR offering:
“Quest Diagnostics is making broadly available a Web-based EHR that helps physicians embrace digital healthcare one step at a time, connect easily with their peers on patient care, and achieve meaningful use that allows them to qualify for government incentives,” said Richard A. Mahoney, Quest Diagnostics’ vice president of Healthcare Information Solutions and president of its MedPlus healthcare information technology subsidiary. “We value the longstanding trust physicians have in our company, and we are proud to answer physicians’ needs with a modular technology that will truly help drive meaningful improvements in quality of care.” MedPlus develops the technologies that power the Care360 suite of physician offerings.
Each week I’m introduced to another interesting type of organization that’s trying to use their connections and relationships with doctors to sale an EHR. Who’s connections are going to win?
Of course, one question that will be interesting for Quest is how they’ll handle interfaces between their Care360 EHR and other vendors. I assume you’ll have to have a Quest lab interface as part of the deal. Does that mean all other labs are shut out? I can imagine that many doctors will be reticent to go with a Quest EHR if it basically locks them into a relationship with only Quest. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
I think this is almost laughable.
The reason I feel this way is due to the fact that the entire large corporate attitude and the media that goes with it, has been strung around this entire sector just fueling the doctors indecision about EMR.
The large corporate companies are thinking about market share how to increase it? Through adding services. Even though the current services they provide are barely tolerable, clients often are often left on hold pressing * something to get to the right person for information about test results and seem to experience a certain level of what I like to call “Corporate frustration”.
These are the people you would entrust your records to?
I am currently converting patient records to digital images for several medical practices helping them bridge the gap to full EMR.
Yesterday afternoon received a call from them asking about a particular patient file.
We went back through our work-flow procedures and came to find out the office itself hadn’t given us all of the patient records that started with the letter “R” . We did this in just under 30 minutes.
Ultimately we immediately got to the bottom of the problem and fixed it for my client.
Can you imagine this happening with the large providers?
You will still be shuffling through the press something menus.
I think this make a great case for everyone to realize this whole process should dealt with based on some basic parameters :
1) Do whats right for your Practice.
2) Be responsible for your own records
3) Choose a vendor who is invested in your practices success.
4) Choose a vendor based on their willingness to perform for you not the stock ticker.
5) Use Common Sense- Large companies may seem more stable and safer but that’s what we assumed about Arthur Anderson and Enron.
I am sorry if this sound more like a rant than a comment but, I think there is a tendency out there to follow the path that is presented by the big companies. “EMR is complex”-“pay now to save later”- “We will help you get reimbursed from the government”.
While these might seem like compelling reasons to move toward EMR, they are mostly propaganda. This area of service is moving too fast for anyone to make all these promises, let alone keep half of them.
The truth is, Media Spiders USA.LLC offers
excellent pricing, exceptional care and service of your records.
What we dont have to offer is a million dollar marketing and advertising budget to let you know this.
Interesting comment about Quest trying to offer yet another service when they’re still trying to figure out their current software. There’s going to be a lot of movement and a lot of disappointment in the next few years.