Welcome to EMR and EHR

I was passing through my LinkedIn account and saw this message from @GrandRounds4ODs which seems to have come from his Twitter account:

Appoint a single point of contact for project/contract compliance. Keep the consultants + vendors honest!

This is some great advice. One point of contact can really help to cut through the lies…err…EMR sales mis communications.

I got the following email from an EMR vendor talking about a simple feature in their EMR that really adds value to their end users. The feature revolves around making the ICD-9 billing codes into something useful beyond billing. Here’s his message:

I was talking with one of my pediatrician docs the other day and she was saying how un-useful ICD-9 is for her. As part of her note in the EMR she has to code things saying otitis media. But, the important thing to her is saying “3rd ear inf. in 2mo”. It is this brief summary note that she includes in what we call an “interim” field in our EMR. That is what she looks for to get her “ah-ha” in working with kids. Looking down a list of previous visits which show date of service and primary dx takes mental work and analysis. But, being able to see this brief note on the next visit is what makes her do her job better – more meaningful shall we say?

These are the things that make EMRs great.

If you have other useful features that make your EMR great, feel free to submit them on my Contact Us page and I’ll post them in the future.

About 6 months to a year ago, a few transcription companies joined EMR and HIPAA as advertisers. Since that time I’ve had a chance to meet with these transcription companies and I must admit that the experience has been really quite intriguing.

So many people see the transcriptionists dieing out and being replaced by EMR and other related technology. Instead, I’ve seen a real strong set of transcription companies that are working to be a compliment to an EMR installation. That’s not to say that they’re not fighting for their lives. They are, but at least they’re not dead on the vine like many might have thought.

One example of this is in MxSecure’s offering an EMR for Medical Transcription companies.

We are really excited about this for other transcription companies. They are currently 2,000 small mom and pop transcription services across the country. They all are doing a great job documenting patient encounters for their customers. As technology is changing we want to help them add more value and keep their business. As compared to larger EMR companies that promote getting rid of your transcription we are the opposite. We are for whatever the physician thinks is most productive for them.

Add in a software like MModal to the dictated notes and I’m really interested to see how an EMR for medical transcription companies is going to work out.

Full Disclosure: As I stated above, MxSecure is an advertiser on my other EMR website, EMR and HIPAA. However, I was not paid or influenced to write this post. I just found it interesting and thought others would too.

I got the following email from an EMR vendor that highlights a number of interesting things about what it’s like for customers interacting with their EMR vendor. It’s very much in line with the experiences I’ve seen and heard. I’ve removed the specific EMR vendor names since the names don’t matter as much as the general experience. Instead I’ve used “small EMR vendor” and “large EMR vendor” and “ePrescribing solution.”

I was looking for an ePrescribe solution to interface to our small EMR vendor about a year ago and settled on using ePrescribing solution. As you probably know, they bailed out of the business and sold their service to large EMR vendor. Now we’ve interfaced our product with theirs.

The thing that makes me chuckle is my clients beat me up all the time on saving “clicks” and yet they don’t say a negative thing about the steps associated with large EMR vendor. I guess its because they know I have control over my product and they realize there is zero from the large EMR vendor.

As an observation, questions and low-level technical support was very, very good from the old ePrescribing solution. It appears to be non-existent with large EMR vendor – maybe because they’re busy dealing with so many conversions from the purchased ePrescribing solution? Don’t know. I also know from first-hand experience that support is rather poor with large EMR vendor.

In the vast amount of information that comes through my email, Twitter account, RSS feeds, etc one of them recently caught my eye. It was a webinar called, “Insane Ideas in Healthcare IT” by Christine D. Chang; Ovum, Analyst of Healthcare Technology (you can find the archived webinar here if you click around a bit). Here’s the description for the presentation:

All great ideas sound “insane” at first. This presentation will describe three insane ideas that Ovum believes will transform healthcare in the future including:
• Telehealth is for everyone, not just the elderly.
• Patient self-diagnosis is good and should be promoted.
• Personal health records are not just a passing trend, they are the solution.

I really love the concept of considering “insane ideas.” So, my question is what EMR ideas do you have that most people would consider insane?

On EMR and HIPAA, I wrote about an EMR platform which I think some might classify as an insane idea. Sometimes I wonder if becoming a full time entrepeneur doing mostly EMR blogging is an insane idea;-) I think that many might consider the Free EMR software an insane idea.

I had one EMR vendor recently ask me to write about them. He hoped that people’s response to my post would be that they all think it’s crazy to try and build an EMR company that way. I guess he prescribes to the best ideas sounding “insane” at first.

Let’s hear what ideas you think might be insane.

I know I shouldn’t post 2 humorous posts in a row (Yes, my Extormity EHR post was a joke), but you’ll have to forgive me. I just couldn’t resist. Go and read this post that has the CMO of Practice Fusion calling out Greek Philosopher, Archimedes (Thanks Michelle W for sharing it).

Now, ask yourself the question, would your CMO write a post like that? More importantly (and interestingly) would your EMR vendor post something as tongue and cheek as that?

Honestly, that’s one of the things I love most about Practice Fusion. They’ve imbued an incredible sense of culture in that company and there’s an energy about it that I just love. As an internet startup junkie, maybe that’s why it feels so familiar. I don’t really know, but it’s definitely a different type of EMR vendor.

I’m still on the fence on the product that Practice Fusion has delivered so far, but I can tell you that this is one EMR vendor that I’d love to work at.