electronic medical records

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ParaVert

Interventional Pain
15+ Year Member
Joined
Apr 23, 2006
Messages
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I am in the market for an EMR next year when I graduate. Any recommendations? Algos has excellent reviews on his website, but seems to be last updated over a year ago. Several practices in Houston use MediNotes, poorly.

Anybody using PC's in their office for patients to input data (HPI, ROS, allergies, etc) into the EMR? Anybody had success with scan-tron paper forms for pts to fill out that can be scanned into the EMR for usable data?

What programs would you NOT recommend due either to bad program or bad service?

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I continue to look for the optimal EMR for pain but frankly have found none that merit mention. Many are either too expensive, too cumbersome, too much setup and maintenance, have hidden costs that jack up the price even further, have limitations on numbers of users/charts open/locations, do not have integrated scheduling systems requiring another more expensive component from a 3rd party vendor that may or may not even work with your program, or have few billiing output options.
Some will patch together statements that are to serve as a letter to your referring physician that sound like a 3rd grader writing.
Templates are very difficult to do for pain medicine since it is a broad field that overlaps many specialties, but procedure templates are relatively easy in most programs. There are some high end programs that require you use their cookie cutter templates or pay a programmer from their company to program the templates.
It is a decidedly frustrating situation since there are so many choices (>300) that operate so poorly in clinical practice. But there are some good programs, however you may have to tailor your practice around the EMR rather than vice versa (eg. Praxis).
 
I could live without billing and scheduling integration if I could just find something that did decent note-taking. It only takes 10 seconds to check off the CPT code and diagnosis on a superbill. A template is ok for repetitive things like the physical exam, ROS, SH, etc. That's what computers do best - repetitive tasks. The wheels fall off the cart with the subjective things like the history, impression, plan, etc.

I made up some MS Word templates for my procedures that work pretty well. All you need is a rudimentary knowledge of the macro language.

So far the only consistently (2 out of 2) positive feedback I've heard has been from users of Centricity from GE, which is hideously expensive.
 
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We've been using Meditabs for about 4 months now, with intergrated billing and scheduling.

It does speed things up for med refills, authorization requests, faxes, etc. But typing or dictation using Dragon Dictate is still slow and cumbersome. All our progress notes still need proofing by a staff member before faxing to referring physicians due to inevitable dictation errors.
 
I am going with prognocis after checking out 7 EMR's. The reasons being customizability, ease of use, integration with advanced MD which is one of the best billing software's that I already have experience with, setup timw of just 3-4 weeks. I am goinf for an asp verison to aviod having a server in house and it makes sense if you have multiple office locations
 
i use springcharts...it works very well for me but is definitely not for everyone......you can see a demo at springmedical.com.......I had a lot of time when I was beginning my practice. Thus, I was able to customize my own templates..... This is why it works well for me.....It is nice to save on transcription costs......I also like that fact the you can log into your server from any computer....This is a nice feature if the ER or another doctor or pharmacy calls you about one of your patients after hours.....Soapware and EMD's are also good systems......Springcharts and Soapware cost about three times less than EMD's......In my opinion e-MD's does not justify the extra costs...However, it is a very popular system....After training you are looking at 20-40K for e-MD's and 5-8K for soapware or springcharts....good luck
 
ASPs are quite the rage now, but would caution against overreliance on them. An ASP uses a remote server provided by the vendor, to communicate through T1, WAN, or high speed internet with your computer. Often the database exists only on the vendors server, and if there are interruptions in internet service (frequent in my area), your system is toast. Also, if the vendor goes out of business you may not be able to access your database nor transfer the database. Some ASP vendors charge astronomical fees to unlock your database for transfer to another EMR.
The best ASPs are those in which the database is stored on your own server as a redundancy to the vendor's storage of the same.
 
We are using Misys with less than acceptable results. Customer service is poor. It was poorly implemented in our practice, we still have no good usable templates, and the cost was enormous. We will be shopping in 2008 for another vendor.
 
I am going with prognicis ASP EMR. It is very very customizable which also means that it will take time for me to costomize it to my office. It is less than 300$ and has only EMR but can be integrated with Advanced MD one of the better billing softwares. ALso Prognocis is owned by Bizmatics which is 500 mil company and hence I am going with asp version hoping they will not close shop overnight.
In a months time when I will start using it I will let you know how good it is.
 
I am in the market for an EMR next year when I graduate. Any recommendations? Algos has excellent reviews on his website, but seems to be last updated over a year ago. Several practices in Houston use MediNotes, poorly.

Anybody using PC's in their office for patients to input data (HPI, ROS, allergies, etc) into the EMR? Anybody had success with scan-tron paper forms for pts to fill out that can be scanned into the EMR for usable data?

What programs would you NOT recommend due either to bad program or bad service?

Hi! Para I have been using CureMD since 2004 at Local Practice in New York and its very good and easy to use software. It include all in one Electronic Medical Records, Practice Management System, Medical Billing Service and it is a subscription based service and i am happy with it as it uses the ASP technology so i can access it any where and can work from office and home.
 
The VA EMR system is awesome (haven't seen a commercial EMR come close). How did the VA get this right, when everything else with the VA is so wrong?
 
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