The Search for Better: Must-Haves for Medical Practice Management Software

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) has been around for decades, and it’s hard to imagine doing without it, much less being dissatisfied with the entire concept. But as recently as 2013, a RAND Corporation survey found wide dissatisfaction with EHRs.

As noted in Robert Wachter’s The Digital Doctor, the RAND study cited “poor usability, time-consuming data entry, interference with face-to-face patient care, inefficient and less fulfilling work content, inability to exchange health information, and degradation of clinical documentation.”

Far too many practices still struggle with such challenges, primarily because they have not adopted a unified healthcare IT ecosystem that reduces the friction standing between physicians and the delivery of outstanding healthcare.

eClinicalWorks: A Cloud-Based EHR that Covers It All

eClinicalWorks provides physicians with a comprehensive, cloud-based EHR and Practice Management solution that improves efficiency by enabling systems to talk to one another, exchange patient data seamlessly, and eliminate detours, roadblocks, and information silos.

Identifying the Five Must-Have Elements

The fundamental task for all practices is connecting with patients and delivering quality care through a sustainable business model. To achieve that requires an EHR that encompasses five essential elements.

Patient Engagement is where healthcare begins. To thrive, any practice must engage and retain patients. eClinicalWorks offers a complete suite of Patient Engagement tools that improves online visibility, allows patients to self-schedule appointments, and sends automated reminders to reduce no-shows.

By integrating the healow Genie™ AI-powered contact center solution with the EHR, practices can achieve even greater efficiency. Genie handles routine phone traffic that would otherwise go to front desk, can field medication refill and referral requests, answers 100% of after-hours calls, and sends automated appointment and screening reminders.

Interoperability is the next step, enabling practices to obtain and compile patients’ medical records. Many practices still struggle to access complete patient records at the point of care, leading to delays in treatment and potential errors that can lead to misdiagnoses and patient harm.

eClinicalWorks practices can leverage PRISMANet, our nationally recognized Quality Health Information Network, to locate all available patient records and compile them into a longitudinal record that lets providers focus on the most relevant data for a given visit.

Cloud-based technology is the linchpin among the five essential elements. It undergirds efficient engagement and interoperability and facilitates proper documentation and Revenue Cycle Management.

Some practices choose to maintain their own servers, but that requires maintaining IT staff and dealing with potential outages and data loss. Some practices still run on paper records, but that means relying on physicians and assistants to locate records, manage faxes, and engage in tedious data entry and recordkeeping. Such organizations may even rely on patients to remember when and where they sought care.

It is faster, cheaper, more reliable, and much safer to run a cloud-based practice. eClinicalWorks provides a nearly 100% uptime guarantee, with secure, instantaneous access to patient records. Practices on the cloud needn’t worry about server maintenance, outages, or natural disasters impacting their data. And providers enjoy access to records when and where needed.

Once patients are engaged and a practice is operating efficiently on the cloud, what about care delivery and documentation?

Value-Based Care (VBC) is the most fundamental change in healthcare in the last decade, shifting payments from a fee-for-service model to prevention, cost control, and better outcomes.

But VBC only works if practices have the right set of integrated tools. When practices implement one-off solutions from multiple vendors, they increase friction in their healthcare delivery systems, requiring staff to take extra steps, manually enter data, and navigate multiple software systems. That can lead to inefficiency, fatigue, and burnout.

eClinicalWorks offers a comprehensive suite of VBC solutions that are integrated with the EHR, eliminating roadblocks, reducing costs, and improving outcomes.

Revenue Cycle Management is the final must-have. In short, every practice needs to manage the bottom line, and doing so more efficiently through AI-powered solutions such as those available from eCW can make the difference between a practice that grows and one that struggles to keep the doors open.

In an industry where margins are thin, it makes no sense to overpay for services that can be rendered more efficiently. eCW’s solutions enable practices to collect copayments electronically, drive down days in AR, and give practice managers unparalleled insight into financial performance.

Putting It All Together

The pace of technological change is such that every month — and even every week — presents practices with better and more cost-effective IT. But inertia, bureaucracy, and institutional and societal politics can slow adoption.

As futurist Ray Kurzweil writes in The Singularity Is Nearer: “Although innovation will unlock transformative capabilities to deliver affordably and effective treatments, this does not guarantee outcomes as if by magic. We will need an engaged public and sensible governance to manage a safe, fair, and orderly transition to more advanced health care.”

That is as true for medical organizations as it is for society. The key is to think strategically, and seek out partners who can help drive innovation and success in a rapidly changing world.

Learn more about the benefits of a comprehensive and unified healthcare IT ecosystem at eClinicalWorks.com.