Dr. John (Chris) O’Connor
Bellefontaine, OH
Sports & Family Medicine
Maple Leaf Family & Sports Medicine, a three-family physician group specializing in family medicine and sports medicine sought out an EMR with practice management and billing built in, for a savings of $8K-$10K in billing costs alone.
Dr. John O’Connor and his colleagues have been on the leading edge of healthcare technology for many years, retaining an EMR provider in 1998. With this solution, however, the practice was forced to outsource its billing at a rate of eight percent, an amount that translated to $8,000-$10,000 per month. Even more unfortunate, in 1999 the EMR vendor closed its doors, leaving Maple Leaf in a five year period during which the practice had no support or upgrade capabilities. Dr. O’Connor sought an EMR with billing and practice management built in to address these issues, hoping that an integrated solution would allow Maple Leaf to conduct all of its billing in-house, thus eliminating the need to outsource.
On June 14, 2004 Maple Leaf went live on an integrated software solution offering EMR and practice management in one package. The training was so easy that the staff took to the change very quickly. While the practice had never used tablet PCs before, staff were so used to using a computer— at a workstation or in a patient exam room—to enter patient information that the ability to carry around a mobile computing device made their lives less complicated. With the tablets now in use, Dr. O’Connor, the “resident IT guy,” has reduced the practice’s hardware requirements, from 18 computers in the clinical area alone to 9 tablets. Fewer devices means less time and money spent fixing hardware and more time seeing patients. This has been one of the biggest benefits of implementing the solution from Westborough, Mass.-based eClinicalWorks – costs.
An integrated EMR/practice management solution also translates into improved quality of life for the practice’s staff. Whereas before nurses would accrue overtime, working until 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. to call in prescriptions, the faxing feature of their EMR software enables nurses to leave at 5:30. Maple Leaf, as a result, was able to bring billing in-house without an increase in front-office staff. The solution benefits patients as well because physicians now have access to lab results and any additional information at their fingertips, allowing for improvements in care management. With two taps of a pen, Dr. O’Connor can retrieve lab results or even remind a patient she’s due for a mammogram, even if she’s come in for an upper respiratory infection.
Documentation flexibility is another benefit Dr. O’Connor appreciates in his EMR solution. “Anyone in my staff can choose to dictate, use handwriting recognition or voice dictation recognition or can use templates, macros and drop-downs. We’ve learned that one size doesn’t fit all. Not all physicians feel comfortable using EMR, so eClinicalWorks makes their lives easier by allowing them to transcribe the old-fashioned way. So whether I’m someone who wants to dig deep to the granular level of patient data or whether I want to press a button, dictate my thoughts and have a transcriptionist do the rest, I’m taken care of.”
Best of all, if there’s ever a time that Dr. O’Connor does not know how to make the most of his integrated solution, he can turn to the independently run user’s group, found at www.ecwusers.com. The group enables him to speak to other users about general medicine issues or specific eClinicalWorks features. In this way, Dr. O’Connor and his colleagues have direct involvement in software improvements.
“Every EMR looks fantastic during a demo,” said Dr. O’Connor. “That’s why doctors want to speak with other doctors. It’s even better that the vendor listens too, and responds quickly to physicians’ needs.”
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