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Case Study: Converting to an EMR after 20 years in practice.
Texas Avenue Medical Clinic in Bryan, Texas
Challenge: Texas Avenue is an established healthcare facility with over 20 years in practice. Operating 7 days per week, with 17 employees, the practice needed to migrate from paper charting into the electronic age. For the project to be successful the new electronic medical record system had to be user friendly, be a full feature EMR and have a proven track record. Having already invested thousands of dollars for their practice management system, Centricity, successfully integrating the new EMR with the practice management system was paramount to this project.
Solution: Lisa Ketchum, business manager at Texas Avenue did her research and discovered that ChartWare was the only electronic record system suitable for large and small facilities to have been awarded five stars in a survey by Family Practice Management, official journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Ms. Ketchum was very impressed with the enthusiastic and glowing references ChartWare received from physicians who had implemented ChartWare and needed it to work with their practice management system. The ChartWare programmers were able to develop an interface enabling ChartWare to share patient data with Texas Avenue's Centricity system for billing and scheduling purposes.
Results: Following 3 days of ChartWare training the entire practice was up and running with their new EMR. Because ChartWare was installed with a deep clinical vocabulary no time was lost building templates. The computerization of note taking during the clinical encounter has benefited not only the practice but the patients as well. Prescriptions and patient aftercare instructions are generated during the charting process making them readily available and legible. Today, Texas Avenue Medical Clinic is taking full advantage of all the benefits of automating the clinical potion of their practice and they did it without the pain normally associated with most conversions.
Case Study: ChartWare EMR resolves Medicare concerns.
William Marsh, M.D. of Scottsdale, Arizona
Challenge: Dr. Marsh's practice serves a patient population of primarily elderly individuals on Medicare. Many of his patients have difficulty remembering all of their medications, not to mention the dosing instructions. Patients also tend to have difficulty explaining to a family member the instructions given to them by the doctor; consequently non-billable time is spent on the phone going over the instructions again. The charting time and follow up documentation required to ensure quality patient care and comply with the Medicare fee schedule was becoming overwhelming for the doctor and his staff. Often Dr. Marsh found himself under-billing for fear that he might over-charge by mistake and be faced with a Medicare fine.
Solution: Dr. Marsh realized that having the ChartWare electronic medical record would address not only the needs of his patients but his documentation and coding concerns as well. ChartWare was so flexible that he could automate his practice without changing his style of practice. He and his staff attended a three-day ChartWare course followed by 2 days of onsite training. Within days they were up and running, in three months they were confident and after six months none of them had the desire to ever go back to their old methods.
Results: "The patients love it," he says, "and I love it too." The notes are now so clear and so quickly made that the patients are given a copy as they leave, with all the information they need, plain to see. When caregivers want to know what happened at the appointment patients no longer have to rack their memories. Everything is listed, orderly and legibly. Medication logs and problems and allergy lists are automatically updated in the patient's chartfile. As for Medicare, Dr. Marsh is no longer under-coding and the documentation is there for anyone to see, recorded at the time of the visit. "My income is up, my costs are down and I can get all my work done in seven hours a day. It's probably the best investment I've ever made."
Case Study: Paper Charts don't work for 24-hour Comprehensive Care.
Primary Caring of Malibu, California
Challenge: David Baron, M.D., Primary Caring of Malibu, California, needed a powerful and versatile electronic medical record system to satisfy the sophisticated clientele that he would serve when he opened his concierge-style medical practice in 2004. Dr. Baron wanted on-demand access to the complete patient medical record from anywhere at any time in order to provide comprehensive 24 hour, 7 day per week care in his office, in patients' homes or at their worksites.
Solution: With an overwhelming variety of systems to choose from, Dr. Baron hired a seasoned health care consultant to assess the electronic medical record products available before making his purchase decision. ChartWare met his requirements as well as enabling him to provide his patients with
a wallet-sized CD-ROM or key chain-styled USB memory drive containing copies of their medical records.
Results: ChartWare met Dr. Baron's requirements as well as offering an entirely paperless office. He says he will never go back to paper because ChartWare is so much better for his staff and undeniably guarantees better quality of care for his patients.
Case Study: Healthcare system finds an EMR that won't slow them down.
Paynesville Area Healthcare System, Paynesville, Minnesota
Challenge: This rural healthcare system operates multiple sites each with a varied mix of inpatient and outpatient services. The sites include a hospital with an emergency department, a long term care facility and 7 clinics. Ancillary services include acupuncture, physical therapy, lab, x-ray and pharmacy. Because the healthcare system is geographically fragmented each individual site was maintaining a separate paper chart. Paynesville's goal was to find a cost effective EMR that could be centrally located but widely accessible from their multiple sites. Other requisite EMR attributes affecting the selection process included ease of use, adaptability to customization requests and features such as alternative data entry formats, reminders, medication lists and search capabilities for quality assurance research.
Solution: Dr. Timothy Malling's search for an EMR took several years and over 20 vendors were reviewed. He knew that ChartWare had what Paynesville was ultimately looking for. ChartWare's clinical knowledge base could easily satisfy the EMR needs of the Paynesville healthcare system while possessing the necessary flexibility to meet users' requests for modifications. There would be no need spend the first 6 months building our clinical vocabulary. Unlike the other EMRs ChartWare would not require providers to reduce their production in order to learn the system.
Results: ChartWare has kept pace with the needs of a growing healthcare system without compromising either productivity or quality of care. Providers spend less time charting and do not stay late to get caught up because most notes are finished by the time the patient encounter is completed. The nursing staff is very happy with ChartWare as they now have on demand access to a complete patient medical record making nursing care more about nursing and less about finding the chart. The physicians taking call have a patient's entire medical history, medications and problems and allergy lists at their fingertips. ChartWare has enhanced not only patient care but the bottom line as well.
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