What ACO features are needed in an EMR?



Accountable Care Organization (ACO) is a healthcare organization composed of voluntary healthcare professionals that include providers, healthcare professionals, hospitals, labs and practices, who come together to perform quality care delivery service for Medicare eligible candidates. EMR stands for Electronic Medical Record, and ACO must use an EMR software to provide high quality service.
Let’s go through some of the ACO features an EMR needs to accommodate.
Standards monitoring and proper management tools, are not efficient in patient service feature in a lot of EMRs out in the market. This result is inconsequential referential integrity when using an EMR. It makes the tracking service of patients a headache or in other words, an impossibility. Take an example. Patient service item is required to be recorded in three sections: exam note, order and message. The verification function from the exam note to the order is inefficiently performed quite frequently, in an EMR while in an ACO’s patient service the tracking of the patient is efficiently performed. It is done so by keeping a track of all events derived from the patient visit or data gathered through contextual tools in order to manage patient service.

Exchanges related to an ACO are entered as miscellaneous message in an EMR. The information pertaining to Counterparty Credit Risk transactions automatically comes in an EMR too, without a proper audit trail. An EMR should be able to identify information accurately from the source.
EMR systems make Continuity of Care Record comply with Meaningful Use, but fail to keep track of the lifecycle of the record. Electronic transaction should be tracked in an EMR software to its source efficiently, from authorization, claim and medical billing. The feature of ACO needed in an EMR is the ability to track the CCR within the EMR software. It will result in producing a proper patient note, and will transmit the visit note to the source of the CCR, which will help in smoothly tracking the process.

There are many structural EMR issues that remain unanswered in an ACO. It is by trial and error method, demand and supply chain and by going to the basic functions repeatedly, the missing features will be added. Since, the use EMR is a necessity of an ACO, EMR vendors should try their best to adequately build the support structure needed to provide the collaborative care ACO aims for. This can be made possible by the combined effort of ACOs and EMR vendors who are interested in filling up the gaps in their product.

Labels: ,

Overcoming the EMR Software skepticism for care providers



Modern innovative technologies in healthcare have lead to consistent changes taking place in the healthcare industry and in the way healthcare professionals provide care. Since care providers are not experts in technology or in using new technologies, they are usually overwhelmed when it comes to the implementation of Electronic Medical Records software (EMRs). Care providers are certainly faced with terms and phrases that they are not aware of when a vendor or any stakeholder is providing training on new technologies or concepts such as Patient Portals or Clinical Decision Support.
The ideal solution to resolve this issue is to create basic templates which include all the required information and definitions of words which are new to the doctors i.e. a glossary. This template should be distributed before the next training is to take place so that everybody involved is educated on the matter. Also, it would help the doctors if all the jargon and abbreviations are changed to simple and easy-to-understand words for future reference. This might actually help the doctors in becoming familiar with the changes quickly – ensuring higher productivity in the future.
If the EMR software had the ability to search for items in their records that would really make things easier for doctors and save their time. Most of the time, doctors have to navigate through a score of pages on the EMR software to find out if the patient was ever on a specific medication or drug. If the EMR has an internal search which would sort through all patient information, then that would solve this problem and the doctor would be easily able to search for specific search queries.

Overall, if an Electronic Medical Record is simple to use and understand, then care providers would be able to save a lot of time, cost and effort, which is what they need to realize for them to whole heartedly start using EMRs.
Read more about: MACRA is a Reality Affecting Us Sooner Than We Think

Exploring the Market for Electronic Medical Records



As a care provider, when you have decided that you want an Electronic Medical Record installed at your practice – then it is time to go the EMR market and check out the various options you have.

As a popular software solution, Electronic Medical Record is abundantly available in the market, offered by thousand of vendors, all promoting different features, functionalists, design, usability and costs. This can hence be very overwhelming for care providers who are in a rush to get this technology-oriented predicament sorted out.

Research suggests that most of the times, care providers take little interest in the details of the product itself, and in fact base their purchasing decision on cost and visual appeal that the software brings with itself. It is imperative for providers to think about the long-term and base their decision on what their current needs are and what their needs would be in the future.

It is infinitely better to purchase an integrated EMR solution that includes Practice Management Solution, Patient Portal and Medical Billing Services. A standalone Electronic Medical Records solution or a Practice Management Solution can lead to compatibility issues which further lead to disruptions in daily workflows.

An integrated Practice Management Solution has the ability to streamline administrative and financial matters for practices, allowing for higher productivity and profitability. This also drives efficiency and eradicates delays in reimbursements – enabling providers to do what they have been trained to do i.e. treating patients and not worrying about administrative time-taking aspects of a busy practice.

With Patient Portals, care providers can help and facilitate patients to request appointments, order prescription refills, communicate with patients and enable quality care especially in the case of Patient Centered Medical Homes.

Integrated with Electronic Medical Records, Medical Billing Services permit quick charge capturing and submission of claims right from the EMR software.
Conclusively, care providers should opt for the solution that best suits their needs. A solution which is easy-to-use, worth the money, and that has a great reputation in the market.

FREE Webinar - Become a CureMD MUvement Champion and learn how to earn Meaningful Use Incentives in 2013


Meet the measures! Receive the incentives! Join the MUvement by CureMD!

If you are one of those who still have not adapted to the Meaningful Use program, then look no further!
CureMD is conducting an educational webinar on Thursday, April 11th, 2013.
Join the ‘CureMD MUvement’ and learn about how you can get up to $64,000 in incentives and analyze the impact of Meaningful Use without incurring any penalties Register Today
With the ‘Fast Track MUvement’ program, join hundreds of CureMD providers who have already achieved Meaningful Use objectives and received thousands of dollars in incentives.According to CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), “Meaningful use is the set of standards defined by (CMS) Incentive Programs that governs the use of electronic health records and allows eligible providers and hospitals to earn incentive payments by meeting specific criteria”
There are some required changes for Stage 1 of Meaningful Use in 2013. Providers will have to generate and transmit prescriptions electronically, they should be capable to exchange key clinical information among providers of care and patient authorized entities electronically, and, makes additions to the objective regulation text for three public health measures.
Stage 2 of Meaningful Use program is set to be implemented by October 2014 and will pertain to advance clinical processes. The criteria for stage 2 broadly encompasses more rigorous health information exchange, increased requirements for e-prescribing and incorporating lab results, electronic transmission of patient care summaries across multiple settings and more patient-controlled data.
The primary goal of meaningful use is the promotion and widespread implementation of Electronic Health Records in the U.S so reap the benefits of complete and accurate information, better access to information and patient empowerment.
More and more providers are adopting Electronic Health records and according to a recent study this number is going to exceed 80% of providers by the end of this year. Hospitals and clinics which do not meet the requirements by the year 2015 will have to face penalties. There will be a 1% reduction in Medicare and Medicaid payments, to be increased to 2% in the next year and 3% in the year after that. Therefore, it is significant for providers to start adopting Meaningful Use as soon as possible so that they can receive higher amounts of incentives.
If you are one of those who still have not jumped on the bandwagon, there is an interesting opportunity for you to acclimatize with the details and requirements of Meaningful Use. Register for free MUvementWebinar

Labels: , , ,

Are you ready to implement EMR at your practice



If your practice is trying to get ready and implement EMR then you need to make sure that you have everything ready.
You are not ready to implement EMR if you have issues in communicating with your current EMR vendor.  You need to make sure that there is one specific person in the organization who is overseeing the implementation and hence knows about each and every little detail about the software. Otherwise, putting the responsibility on medical staff will overburden them and will compromise their quality of work at the office.

To get the practice EMR ready, you will need to look at the following things:

1.       Educate every relevant person in the office about the upcoming changes and hold trainings on how to use the integrated software. Provide basic guidelines to the management and how to best use the EMR software.
2.       Ask questions from the vendor about every issue that you are facing with the software and how they think the issue should be resolved. Put in place a single person who will coordinate with the vendors and solve issues at the workplace.
3.       Make sure that you try out a testing phase of the EMR software before it is actually supposed to go live at the practice. Initiate the use of EMR throughout the office a couple of months before the actual starting date so that every issue that comes with the running of the software is handled before and everyone gets to learn how to use the software on a daily basis.
4.       Take control of your previous problems caused by paper-based records. Analyze why there was a problem in the first place and how the implementation of EMR is going to solve these problems.
5.       You have to make sure that there is financial stability at the workplace because the implementation of EMR can cost a lot in the implementation phase. If the practice is running behind on meeting up with the expenses incurred on the software implementation then take a step back and wait for the situation to ameliorate.

The implementation of an EMR software takes some time so the practice should be diligent and should start working on it as soon as possible. Getting late in the implementation process can cause havoc at the practice where everybody already has a lot of workload to look after.