The Right Way to Implement an EHR CureMD 10:30

Implementing an EHR can be difficult if the practice is small. Small practice is considered as a small business and the priority of any business is to have more money to operate. Only those who have seen the monthly pressure of running a small practice can know the reason why the EHR implementation is so hard.

But nothing is impossible; before you begin you might want to consider these mistakes:

Choosing the wrong EHR-the important part of selecting an EHR is to do the research first. You would want to pick the product that you will use to improve your practice’s efficiency.

Taking the task too lightly- EHR vendors make the implementation sound easy. To utilize the full benefits of EHR, you need to consult, plan carefully before you select the EHR.

Unclear goals-If your reason of implementing an EHR is to get the incentive from the government than that is not a good reason. You can lose far more than with a bad implementation.

Tips for Success

The definitionof a successful EHR implementation is one that doesn’t frustrate the staff and patients, or bankrupt your practice or reduce the productivity of your practice. Your goal should be to continue the daily operations normally. Follow these tips for the initial implementation:

Target on easy gains first- Advantage of having an EHR is that you can access the information from anywhere. You can access consult notes, radiology reports, labs and office notes from a single place that is accessible from any location. The difficult part of using an EHR is to put the information in the patient record. 

You can optimize your data retrieval by doing following:

• Scan in all consultation reports, radiology reports etc.
• Get the other practices and local hospitals to send you the important documents electronically to your EHR
• Interface with the labs

Implementation is a process- Even after using the EHR for so many years; changes are still implemented to the process. So it is an ongoing process that never stops.

Ways to Attract Patients to Your Chiropractic Clinic CureMD 07:57

If you are working as a chiropractor then you would want to attract new patients to your clinic. These days those individuals who work in the chiropractic industry can choose from a large range of marketing schemes. If you haven’t created a marketing campaign in the past then you would need some help as you try to create effective advertising. The purpose of this article is to help you create a successful spinal decompression marketing campaign.

Spinal decompression is being offer by all of chiropractors because it appeals to a larger audience. Individuals falling into every racial category, age bracket and level of income can have soreness and pain in their backs. With spinal decompression much of the discomfort will be alleviated if not all. Due to the fact that the large numbers of individuals are attracted to spinal decompression service, advertising it is one of the best choices for chiropractors who want to increase their clients.

Provide Incentive to Current Patients

Patient referral marketing is one of the best things a chiropractic specialist can provide. This method consists of providing some kind of incentive to your current clients in order to attract their friends and relatives to your office. Let’s say for example you can give your clients a fifteen dollar discount for every new patient they bring to you.

Giving Incentives to New Clients

If you are deciding to make up a good new patient marketing plan, you need to consider what can be an incentive for the people who schedule appointments at your clinic. For example you can create a relationship with the restaurant in your area and give gift cards to all your new patients at the end of their first appointments. It can be of real benefit to your practice especially if your town is small.

Make Use of Resources Available in Your Area

Those chiropractors who work in small towns are usually unaware of the range of area resources that they can make use of. If you are looking to create an amazing spinal decompression marketing strategy then you should try putting yourself on the radio station that serves your town. Doing so will allow large number of people in that area to learn about an opportunity in a single moment.

It is also a good idea to talk with someone who is employed at your local town’s newspaper. Maybe they will allow an article to be published about your practice and help you introduce your practice to those people who are unaware of your business.

3 Ways to Market Your Medical Practice CureMD 12:29

In many ways marketing is defined as how well you influence emotional triggers like pride, fear, guilt and an instant to delight to craft messages about a particular service or a product.

It doesn’t mean that medical practices are exempted from content marketing because of the fact that the patients experience the above mentioned emotions while visiting the doctor’s office.

Below are outlined some basic marketing techniques to help your practice get started.

Define your practice

If your medical practice clearly states that you are a pediatrician than you are defining yourself right?

Not exactly, as you have spent years earning credentials and studying about your medical specialization. Then there is no need to reduce it to one word. Describing your practice helps you to communicate with your patient to let them know your value, goals etc. so that they will feel comfortable and confident in your care. Before defining your practice on paper perform a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). 

Branding

Branding isn’t the packaging on your favorite brand of suit but it is one of the most important investments that you will make.

Follow three Cs of branding: credibility, consistency and connection. With a good design comes credibility and it enhances your image providing your patients the impression of what you are doing. It is also an opportunity to familiarize yourself, before the patient visits your office.

Consistency is pivotal to extending the sense of familiarity and comfort and it is the backbone of the connection that you will establish with patients. The way you do branding will help express who you are, what you can deliver and why anyone should trust you.

Don’t forget to spread your branding over to the corporate environment through business cards, envelopes, print ads, prescriptions and envelops among many other materials. Branding is consistently important to stress the benefits of your practice to your community.

Social media

Having a web presence is a must. It should not just be about making up a page or two using a standard template and pictures. Your website should be informative and it needs to match your brand. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays its role here, so if you are making your own website or hiring a professional to do so make sure that your content is picked up by the search engines.

Usability is one of the most important elements of your sites success and Patient needs to feel comfortable in your online home. Your website is your practices’ online presence on the web and from here you can decide that whether you want to create a strong social media presence of yourself which will allow your patients to have a closer view of your personality, or you can branch out and give though leadership to get published in blogs and other websites.

6 Steps to Make Sure You Attest for Meaningful Use Stage 2 CureMD 08:18

If you have attested for MeaningfulUse and received the EHR Incentive funds for the years 2011 or 2012, then you need to start preparing for Meaningful Use Stage 2 in 2014. The EHR incentive program for eligible providers is fairly well understood but in 2014 there are many changes that everyone needs to be aware of, whether you are starting out with an EHR or you have participated in an incentive program since 2011. These are the facts that you need to know:

• Upgrade to new version of EHR Software that should be 2014 certified regardless of if you are attesting under stage 1 or stage 2. Some of the vendors charge for the EHR software upgrade.

• If you are an Eligible Provider and you haven’t met any MU requirements either in 2013 or 2014 then there will be a 1% cut in Medicare Payments in 2015.

• For every provider there is a period of 2 years for each MU stage. For example if a provider started in 2011 or 2012 then that provider needs to report on stage 2 in 2014. If a provider starts in 2013, he will report stage 2 in 2015.

• In the year 2014 there will be 4 occasions to meet the stage 2 criteria. The reporting period in 2014 will be in quarters (Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sep. Oct-Dec) unless you are participating in 2014.

• The year 2014 is the last year for the providers who want to begin their participation in the Medicare Incentive Program. You need to report for any consecutive 90 day period that will end in September 30, 2014 and you need to attest it by October 1, 2014 to avoid the 1% penalty to Medicare payments.

• If you are participating in Medicaid Program then you should expect a 1% cut in 2015 if you haven’t attested for MU by October 1, 2014. Please note that first year of Medicaid participation is for Adopt/Implement/Upgrade and it does not count as attesting for MU.

 

Best Practices for Selecting Electronic Health Record Software CureMD 12:34

In the same way as practice management systems optimized your patient schedule, today’s EHR guarantee to automate your clinical workflows. Having an EHR can help you reduce time spent on charting; it offers efficient patient visits and helps meet the requirements.

The good about selecting an EHR is that it doesn’t need any in depth knowledge. Instead you just need to follow a simple disciplined selection procedure. As there are hundreds are of different software packages available on the market you can quickly narrow them down if you know what criteria to follow.

• Take ownership of decision: The EHR Software that you use will affect you regarding how you practice your medicine. So this is not a process that should be handed over to your staff or some computer guy. Although the practice staff has a key role to play in selection but this process requires leadership and medical expertise that only the physician can offer. You need to take ownership of the selection process to make sure you buy the right EHR!

• Decide your own requirements: You are the only one who knows how you practice medicine. Thus it is essential to chalk out your own workflow and how you interact with practice staff to complete the patient visit. Do you want a system with end to end solution that goes all the way to claim management or you just want to restrict the system to electronic charting? Remember that your interaction with the vendor is an opportunity to learn new workflows and practices that can help you improve your work. Based on your requirements create a detailed list of features and prioritize them based on which is most relevant to your practice.

• Select the right EHR for your specialty:  Many EHRs are designed to serve a large number of practices while others are designed for specialties. Each approach has its benefits and drawbacks. The focus of the specialty EHR vendors allows them to design their systems around the specific needs of physicians within their target market. For example an OB/GYN EHR would have some templates designed particularly for ante partum visits. This helps provide familiar workflow for the specialty provider. Large vendors with that have wider reach and more resources may not be able to provide the specialty workflows and features. So you need to ask the larger and more generic vendors to tell you how they will meet unique requirements of your practice.

• Ease of use: Practicing medicine without software is complex enough to handle. Thus it is essential to find a system that makes every encounter easier and not hard. The system must be easy to use. The easiest way to assess ease of use is to have the demo of the product yourself. EHR features that supplement the ease of use of the software include stylus interface, voice recognition and online help functions.

• Analyze support and upgrades: Consider how support is delivered. Leading vendors offer support 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. You will definitely be needing support on weekends if you work like most physicians and you might also require nighttime support even though you’re viewing records. Consider factors like, do you want help on site? Or are you fine talking to a foreign call center staff? When we talk about software the support isn’t only the technical assistance, it also includes bug fixes, access to new features and getting upgrades. Evaluate the vendor’s record in delivering the high quality new releases regarding the software and staying consistent.

• Be smart regarding your budget: With EHR software’s prices can range from $1,000 to $100,000 so you can quickly narrow your search based on price. But using this approach you are more likely to limit your ability to find the right system. The software doesn’t need to be expensive to be good so don’t buy on the price alone. The right buyer will consider buying the system based on return on investment rather than thinking about the money. Expensive systems usually meet the latest standards like CCHIT, and meet sophisticated features and are integrated with third party devices like imaging systems and heart monitors.

• Make a Deployment Strategy: Using the new technologies and internet connections it is possible to access your health records from anywhere over the web. These are software as a service (SaaS) or Application Service Provider (ASP) and offer low front costs, they provide ease of use of a Web Base Application and simplify maintenance. There is a large investment done by vendors in security, data redundancy and HIPAA compliance. SaaS requires a high speed internet connection to work consistently. But the practice will be less efficient if the connection is slow. If the connection is down so will the ability to access the patient records.

Selecting the right EHR Software is a prerequisite to having a best practice. There are many more criteria regarding the selection process for EHRs but these seven best practices will help you find the right system for your practice.