What Is The Average Time Before A Practice Is Comfortable With Their EMR?

Making the shift to an EMR-based practice is sure to impact your work-method in more ways than you can count. This impact recoils with a significant amount of change that practitioners are known to dislike as it brings them to a rather discomforting and unfamiliar territory. In fact, a research by evitontest.info suggests that the biggest obstacles to EMR implementation have been physician resistance and lack of useful information or not knowing where to start. It does not take much to realize that the manner in which you approach these obstacles will determine the time it will take your practice to get comfortable with the EMR. Therefore, the real challenge resides in adopting realistic measures to help your staff internalize the new technology and utilize it to its maximum potential. EMR...

Read more »

What Do Practices Look For When Hiring A Medical Assistant?

Digitization of the healthcare industry has lead to an increasing demand for qualified, experienced and IT educated medical assistants to help practices and physicians meet their Meaningful Use objectives. Although this has opened up many new opportunities for job seeking medical assistants, it has also resulted in practices raising the bar pertaining to candidate quality, experience and training standards. Jobs and Duties of a Medical Assistant As a medical assistant, you are in charge of performing administrative and basic clinical tasks of the practice. While your job description may differ depending on the size and location of the practice, your basic responsibility is to ensure the smooth and efficient running of day to day operations and clinical tasks that are assigned to you. The...

Read more »

What Do Hospitals Look For When Buying A Practice?

Hospitals today are aggressively engaging in practice acquisitions in their local markets.  Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) statistics reveal that over 50% of physician practices are now owned by hospitals.  Before buying a practice, hospitals assess the practice’s value in terms of its patient volumes, number of hospital referrals, estimates of patient turnover, and so on. Sustainability Hospitals usually avoid buying practices that are in the last stages of their life cycle. Practices that cannot offer sustainability do not make good prospects as they lack future planning and goals. It is true that hospitals get tempted to buy out retiring physicians only because of their reputation and respect in the medical community. However, a growing number of hospitals have...

Read more »

Choosing the Right EMR for Your Practice

Converting your practice into an EMR-based one has the potential to change the entire working of your practice. It is a decision that requires you to carefully review a number of factors that will help you pick an EMR that best suits your goals and vision for the software. Your EMR Must Understand Your Practice  In order to pick an EMR that best understands your practice, it is important that you understand it first. Before embarking on the selection process, you must make a note of the specific requirements of your specialization that must be supported by your EMR. Workflow and processes, customized templates, Meaningful Use objectives differ from one specialization to another. Your EMR must adapt to these parameters in order to maximize its usability and usefulness. You must also...

Read more »

Are State Funds available to help off-set the cost of EHRs?

EHR funding as part of the information technology incentive program can be availed through Medicare or Medicaid. The primary difference between Medicare and Medicaid is that the Medicare Incentive Program is federally run by CMS and the Medicaid Incentive Program for EHR funding is provided by State governments. Choosing between Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs requires you to consider some important points before taking a decision. Eligibility Criteria for Medicaid EHR Incentive Program or State FundsTo avail of State Funds under Medicaid for your EHR, practitioners must have a practice that is 30% Medicaid. This number is lower for pediatricians at 20% and 10% for Acute Care Hospitals. Some providers like nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives, dentists, and physician...

Read more »

Can FREE EMRs get your practice through Meaningful Use?

With the federal government pushing EMR implementations by incentivizing their Meaningful Use, providers of Healthcare Information Systems are all rushing in to get a bite of that booming business pie. As a result, doctors and practitioners find themselves lost in a sea of information and complicated jargon about the various types of EMRs and EHRs available, each claiming to be the best for your Meaningful Use objectives. Traditional EMR business-models have priced EMR systems for tens of thousands of dollars, making it prohibitive for practices to adopt them. However, with EMRs now being a statutory requirement, an increasing number of Healthcare IT providers are starting to work on revenue models that enable them to provide practitioners with outstandingly efficient EMR systems, absolutely...

Read more »

America’s Top CCHIT Certified EMR Systems

With an estimated 300-400 companies peddling to sell their EMR systems in the country, medical practitioners find it overwhelmingly difficult to choose an EMR system that is best suited to their practice and specialization. In order to narrow down the multitude of options available in the market today, a good idea would be to start by reviewing America’s top CCHIT Certified EMR systems. What is CCHIT Certification? Does it guarantee EMR quality and performance? CCHIT is an independent, non-profit organization that develops criteria for its CCHIT Certified® program based on nationally recognized standards to certify EHRs. These certification criteria are developed by your peers – work groups of practicing clinicians and health information technology experts – taking into account the state...

Read more »