EMR Reviews

[wannabie]

Hi,

Student Doc has helped me out so much during my career that I am excited to share something that other people may find helpful!

I recently began to set up my own private practice and I struggled mightily to research and select an EMR that fit my needs. There's very little information said about many of the EMR's!

I have nothing to disclose. I am not being paid by any EMR's or EHR's.
I have some biases and preferences:

• I prefer simple and beautiful EMR's that are a breeze to use.
• I wanted to be operational in six weeks.
• I like good customer service.
• I hate having to pay to test out an EMR.
• I really like EMR's that have a robust online portal that allows me to use customized forms to send intake forms and scales.
• I have biases I'm not aware of.

In general, I noticed two types of EMR's: therapy oriented and medication oriented. Therapy oriented EMR's operate with simplicity and don't have prescribing built into them. EMR's with prescribing are bulkier and can be difficult to use; you often can't try before you buy them and need to watch someone use the program to learn anything about it.

Therapy oriented EMR's:
Theranest, therapynotes, simplepractice: ($49-60 per month). They're all great at appointment scheduling and billing.

Prescribing oriented EMR's: they all have lab integration, electronic prescribing of controlled substances, and some online experiences built in.
Practice Fusion ($100 per month): it's still the gold standard as it's cheap(er), capable, well-designed, easy to use, and has great patient engagement options.
Luminello ($100 per month): does everything decently well, but isn't as slick as Practice Fusion. It allows customizable forms.
DrChrono ($200 per month): beautiful with great apps for iOs, own dictation system, pretty good online engagement things with patient education documents from Mayo Clinic. Probably not worth the extra money.
Valant ($200 per month): super ugly and cluttered interface that's hard to use; they market themselves as being behavioral health specific, but they don't offer anything behavioral health specific: they have a few scales built into the system, but so does Practice Fusion and Luminello. They have integrated e-faxes.
Kareo ($300 per month): capable, but cluttered interface, All Scripts integration, "reputation monitoring" to look at and get reviews that is half-baked and not functional; minimally functional online portal. There's no reason to pay the extra money.


I became super stressed and anxious and ended up signing a one year contract with Kareo because they made it sound like their online portal and customizability would allow me to practice the way I wanted. I was really disappointed when I found the lack of functionality. It took seven weeks for me to get the electronic prescribing going, but I was able to get that functionality in Luminello and Practice Fusion in less than two weeks during their free trials. My patients struggled to schedule online in Kareo and I actually decided to use Simple Practice, which allowed me to place their scheduling system on my website (DrChrono is the only other EMR I looked at that allows you to do this). I still use Kareo to eprescribe every once in a while, but it's really buggy and I've found it easier to use paper scripts or call in prescriptions. I'm thinking of switching my e-prescribing to Luminello for e-prescribing because they have an offer that makes it free to use as long as you are under contract with a different EMR.

General advice:
- don't overwhelm yourself with the research.
- if you have a small practice, try Practice Fusion or Luminello.
- a therapy platform (I recommend simplepractice. It's like a beautiful CPRS with great web integration options) + different prescribing platform may be a better solution for some people.
- pony up $$$ to test the more expensive platforms so that you don't waste money when you sign a contract.
- doximity is great for e-faxes.

I hope someone finds that helpful. If someone had written up something like this, I would have saved myself a lot of time and money! I'm happy to answer questions..

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[Sushirolls]

I went with Luminello. So far pretty happy.

-Waiting on the Fob key though for controlled Rx. But honestly I have no problem printing out the controlled substances. They are slow in getting me the key and billing more for it. Might need to remind them.
-Cons, no phone support, only email. But they do respond to the emails. But at the end of the day, I'm expecting to be disappointed by all EMR support.
-Quite easy and intuitive to use. After navigating around it for a while, I like it. Even has "snippets" which are basically custom made smart phrases in Epic.
-Love the custom forms and questionnaires I've created. They can pull/paste into notes and really is very efficient. These forms are geared to higher functioning population. I typically direct my inquiries when I talk by phone to my website to pursue Luminello as start of intake process.
-I also run UDS tests and the lab entry is not efficient. I messaged them requesting to add to their development feature but who knows if/when that will be done. I hope to avoid using paper and scanning in a sheet as fastest documentation. So I'll wait out their development people.
-Con could also be that its not an official Medicare recognized EMR. But compared to something like Valant which is, I'd rather enjoy working with my EMR on a daily basis then use a such a product simply for medicare billing optimization.
-Cons, definitely don't cut/paste outside material into notes or your template/questionnaire builder. The system may freak out and display wrong and have other formatting issues when trying to view. You have to do it from scratch.
-it takes time for sure to make your custom forms and questionnaires, but once you got them, man they are nice. I like this EMR more than Epic. Then only reason I long for Epic is the integration into local entities for CareEverywhere. Only reason.
-Lots of smaller work flow things I've noted and messaged them on. We'll see how they respond.
-Currently the online scheduling feature is kind of on or off. Patients can either immediately schedule how they want or not. I'm waiting for them to officially role out ability to temper the scheduling. For instance, new client appears after doing the pre-screen questions, and won't be able schedule into a new consult slot until you check a box to permit that for that patient. Right now its a default for the patients, so I had one patient immediately lock in an appointment consult who wasn't appropriate for me in the first week of my practice. I've since turned the feature off, but I do look forward to its potential.
-I haven't used their integrated billing. I'm currently using a 3rd party, who I produce the super bill and demographics sheet too. Luminello has ability produce both.
-I've used their online credit card integration for bill pay, and works quite nicely. No complaints.
-It has a "task" function, that after you play around with it, will make more sense, but its quite nice, and I foresee myself relying on it quite heavily.

In summary Pros are greater than Cons and I'm not looking to change.