Re: starting up, need an EMR

[Guest guest]

Graham, thanks for that clarification. I’m

so glad that e-MDs is fully certified J

Pratt

Office Manager

Oak Tree Internal Medicine P.C

www.prattmd.info

From:

[mailto: ] On

Behalf Of Graham Chiu

Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011

11:03 AM

To:

Subject: Re:

Re: starting up, need an EMR

Sorry but that's not true. Dr Blumenthal recently clarified

this ... you have to have access to *ALL* the meaningful use criteria even

though you only plan to use only some of them to get meaningful use. So,

either you get a fully certified EMR, or you get one that is partially

certified, and have access to another that covers the remaining criteria, even

if you're not planning to use them this round.

The rationale is that he wants to make sure that in the coming years

you are able to then meet all the other MU criteria.

So, in your example, Clearpractice would not work even if they do all

the criteria you are planning to use. Same applies to PracticeFusion and

so forth.

--

Graham Chiu

http://www.compkarori.co.nz:8090/

Synapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

[Guest guest]

It's important .. a *LOT* of people are going to get pissed when they find that they spent all their time doing the MU thing and then find that they won't qualify because some EMR company has scammed them.  Practicefusion was pointed out as such a company engaging in such deceptive practices.

Graham, thanks for that clarification.  I’m

so glad that e-MDs is fully certified J

 

Pratt

Office Manager

Oak Tree Internal Medicine P.C

www.prattmd.info

From:

[mailto: ] On

Behalf Of Graham Chiu

Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011

11:03 AM

To:

Subject: Re:

Re: starting up, need an EMR

 

 

 

 

Sorry but that's not true.  Dr Blumenthal recently clarified

this ... you have to have access to *ALL* the meaningful use criteria even

though you only plan to use only some of them to get meaningful use.  So,

either you get a fully certified EMR, or you get one that is partially

certified, and have access to another that covers the remaining criteria, even

if you're not planning to use them this round.

 

The rationale is that he wants to make sure that in the coming years

you are able to then meet all the other MU criteria.

 

So, in your example, Clearpractice would not work even if they do all

the criteria you are planning to use.  Same applies to PracticeFusion and

so forth.

 

--

Graham Chiu

http://www.compkarori.co.nz:8090/

Synapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.compkarori.co.nz:8090/Synapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

[Guest guest]

I agree with Jeanne and Adolfo.

Those who stand strong on their choice made the right one for them.

Because I wtached on the list serv before opening 2.5 years ago I heard that.

So I went looking for an EMR that worked the way I think.

No EMR is perfect but the one that lets you see patients without a lot of wasted time learning the system

and seems intuitive to you is important to your mental health and the practice efficiency.

Good luck with your choice.

Myria

Amazing Charts User with free Office Ally -- waiting for that practice management component

To: Sent: Fri, January 7, 2011 2:26:24 PMSubject: Re: Re: starting up, need an EMR

the type of EMR that you are going to use,will determine part of your success or failure.

It may be expesive but you wont change it if you choose the right one.

I understand that EMD's got good ratings in a couple of practice magament articles. EMR is a big investment do it right from the begining.

If you have an EMR that can multitask,be user friendly and have all your info at your fingertips. You will save a lot of money in overhead.

I used to work in a place that they had Mycis. I think it was a big microsoft word EMR, no way to find out when your last Td vaccine was. You needed to read all the progress notes to find out all you previous care and preventive care. I mentioned to my previous employer,but he did not care (orthopedist).

I know the money is not easy, but think about it, you will ended up paying more money.

Also another factor to keep in mind is: how the EMR would affect you?. Some of them make you go slow and you can not see patients as fast as paper and pen.

Also I would like to have an EMR that help me to keep an eye on the patients: labs warning, pending mamo or colon eval,bone density tests.

Here I am giving my 2 cents and I even dont have a practice yet.

I will make the leap for an IMP, dont know when.

Adolfo.

To: Sent: Fri, January 7, 2011 2:02:33 PMSubject: Re: Re: starting up, need an EMR

I agree the e-MDs patient portal isn’t too robust. We have not implemented that portion of it, as the ROI just isn’t there for our practice. The initial cash outlay to start up from scratch with Tangible is much less than we paid initially with software, hardware, licensing fee, etc. for our in-house system. I know that e-MDs has increased their licensing fees because of the extra programming that they’ve done to get certified for Meaningful Use. I would not, under any circumstances, implement an EMR that is not certified for Meaningful Use. If you go to this website: http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert/EHRProductSearch you can put in different EMR systems in the middle box and search by name (make sure to click on the box that says “searchâ€). When it finds the EMR, then you can click on the name

and it will show you all of the MU criteria that particular EMR is certified to address. Just looking at Clearpractice, they are not yet certified for all of the ambulatory clinical measures. You want to make sure that the ambulatory measures that you would report on are certified with the EMR that you select, or you won’t qualify for the MU $$. E-MDs is certified for everything. AthenaHealth is not certified at all.

Sorry but that's not true. Dr Blumenthal recently clarified this ... you have to have access to *ALL* the meaningful use criteria even though you only plan to use only some of them to get meaningful use. So, either you get a fully certified EMR, or you get one that is partially certified, and have access to another that covers the remaining criteria, even if you're not planning to use them this round.

The rationale is that he wants to make sure that in the coming years you are able to then meet all the other MU criteria.

So, in your example, Clearpractice would not work even if they do all the criteria you are planning to use. Same applies to PracticeFusion and so forth.

-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.compkarori.co.nz:8090/Synapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

[Guest guest]

I agree with Jeanne and Adolfo.

Those who stand strong on their choice made the right one for them.

Because I wtached on the list serv before opening 2.5 years ago I heard that.

So I went looking for an EMR that worked the way I think.

No EMR is perfect but the one that lets you see patients without a lot of wasted time learning the system

and seems intuitive to you is important to your mental health and the practice efficiency.

Good luck with your choice.

Myria

Amazing Charts User with free Office Ally -- waiting for that practice management component

To: Sent: Fri, January 7, 2011 2:26:24 PMSubject: Re: Re: starting up, need an EMR

the type of EMR that you are going to use,will determine part of your success or failure.

It may be expesive but you wont change it if you choose the right one.

I understand that EMD's got good ratings in a couple of practice magament articles. EMR is a big investment do it right from the begining.

If you have an EMR that can multitask,be user friendly and have all your info at your fingertips. You will save a lot of money in overhead.

I used to work in a place that they had Mycis. I think it was a big microsoft word EMR, no way to find out when your last Td vaccine was. You needed to read all the progress notes to find out all you previous care and preventive care. I mentioned to my previous employer,but he did not care (orthopedist).

I know the money is not easy, but think about it, you will ended up paying more money.

Also another factor to keep in mind is: how the EMR would affect you?. Some of them make you go slow and you can not see patients as fast as paper and pen.

Also I would like to have an EMR that help me to keep an eye on the patients: labs warning, pending mamo or colon eval,bone density tests.

Here I am giving my 2 cents and I even dont have a practice yet.

I will make the leap for an IMP, dont know when.

Adolfo.

To: Sent: Fri, January 7, 2011 2:02:33 PMSubject: Re: Re: starting up, need an EMR

I agree the e-MDs patient portal isn’t too robust. We have not implemented that portion of it, as the ROI just isn’t there for our practice. The initial cash outlay to start up from scratch with Tangible is much less than we paid initially with software, hardware, licensing fee, etc. for our in-house system. I know that e-MDs has increased their licensing fees because of the extra programming that they’ve done to get certified for Meaningful Use. I would not, under any circumstances, implement an EMR that is not certified for Meaningful Use. If you go to this website: http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert/EHRProductSearch you can put in different EMR systems in the middle box and search by name (make sure to click on the box that says “searchâ€). When it finds the EMR, then you can click on the name

and it will show you all of the MU criteria that particular EMR is certified to address. Just looking at Clearpractice, they are not yet certified for all of the ambulatory clinical measures. You want to make sure that the ambulatory measures that you would report on are certified with the EMR that you select, or you won’t qualify for the MU $$. E-MDs is certified for everything. AthenaHealth is not certified at all.

Sorry but that's not true. Dr Blumenthal recently clarified this ... you have to have access to *ALL* the meaningful use criteria even though you only plan to use only some of them to get meaningful use. So, either you get a fully certified EMR, or you get one that is partially certified, and have access to another that covers the remaining criteria, even if you're not planning to use them this round.

The rationale is that he wants to make sure that in the coming years you are able to then meet all the other MU criteria.

So, in your example, Clearpractice would not work even if they do all the criteria you are planning to use. Same applies to PracticeFusion and so forth.

-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.compkarori.co.nz:8090/Synapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

[Guest guest]

,

Is the contract with Happe or Tangible?

From: [ ] On Behalf Of Pratt [karen.oaktree@...]

Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 8:33 AM

To:

Subject: RE: starting up, need an EMR

If anyone is interested in how much we spent for Tangible, please contact me off-list. We did not cut any kind of special deal with

them because I just don’t have the time or energy to quibble over a few dollars per month. All said and done, our startup fees with Tangible (Happe-MDs) are a LOT less than the cost of a new server. Plus we have the flexibility to work from anywhere that

we have an internet connection (while technically we could do this with remote desktop into our server, it was cumbersome and slow and we tended not to do so). Our monthly cost for 3 users – not including hardware – will be about $165 more than what we were

paying for just our IT guy. However, when you take into account that a server is good for about 5 years, at $7000 (it would have been more for use because of the travel time for our IT guy, who is in Maine), that’s $117/month just for the hardware. Our estimate

for a new server was $9000, so that’s $150/month. I am more than willing to pay $15/month for someone ELSE to worry about our backup, plus do all of the updates. I haven’t updated CPT/ICD-9 codes since November, and we don’t have the new G code for Medicare

Physicals in there yet (did our first one this week). Add to that that this is a service (similar to your phone), so it is also tax-deductible, but we don’t have to depreciate anything. If we had more than 3 users, we would have considered purchasing a new

server. But it just wasn’t worth it for our small office. Plus, we didn’t want to be tied down to a new server cost if we decided to move or close our doors or whatever.

And I agree with : e-MDs is completely worth it’s integration. With Meaningful Use coming up this year, I suspect that we will

see about 85% of the maximum over the next 5 years, which is a total of $37,450, which will more than pay for Happe-MDs.

YMMV,

Pratt

Office Manager

Oak Tree Internal Medicine P.C

www.prattmd.info

From:

[mailto: ] On Behalf Of

Dr. Brady

Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 3:51 AM

To:

Subject: RE: starting up, need an EMR

OK,

So I calculated actual costs for everything over the past 8 years for me to use e-mds = 73,500 = 765/month. Now, that includes a new server

and all the IT stuff associated with it done last year (and, of course, the original server, desktops, other equipment, and networking bought when I first opened). I have also needed even more IT support this year as I am trying to add the portal and lab interface,

etc. Even if I just pay the upgrade and maintenance fees for the next 2 years, the cost is still over 600/month. Jim is correct in that the cost/month drops dramatically when you depreciate expenses, but I have not looked at those numbers—this is just what

I pay out.

Lots of money. Though I’m not sure what my costs would be through Happe-mds, I would likely go with that option if I had not just bought

a new server. I think is right that the cost becomes a wash either way, but the difference is that I would know exactly how much I am going to spend every month. The new server cost me like $7000 last year…tough to come up with all at once.

P.S. E-mds is still totally worth it to me because I do my own billing. Just that alone (even at 6% of collections) would have cost me $114,000

over the past 8 years. Not a bad deal, that means I save >$5000/year and get the very slick, highly integrated EHR for free.

J

From: [mailto: ]

On Behalf Of Pratt

Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 1:37 AM

To:

Subject: Re: starting up, need an EMR

Happe-mds is WAY less than $600/mo

600/mo is a ton of money When you start up, while you do not want to change EMRs later, do keep cost slow When few patients are coming in but bills DO come in, taking on large overhead

can casue bad trouble

Jean

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 11:22 AM,

dshep0127@... wrote:

I'm looking at eMDs, Clearpractice, and AthenaHealth. Clearpractice is software as a service and is about $600/mo. I wouldn't need to purchase hardware, upgrades,

worry about backups, or hire IT help. eMDs is established (and people seem to love it) but is a bigger initial outlay ($25K for hardware, IT help, backup...). Anyone have any thoughts?

--

MD

ph fax

impcenter.org

[Guest guest]

I use Officeally and it allows me to do my own billing quite easily, pt portal, manage office etc for $30 /mos, no up front costs. I think it is certified, they claim this: ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 Certified as a Complete EHR Office Ally Announces ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 Certification of Its Electronic Health Records System, EHR 24/7

 

I'm looking at eMDs, Clearpractice, and AthenaHealth. Clearpractice is software as a service and is about $600/mo. I wouldn't need to purchase hardware, upgrades, worry about backups, or hire IT help. eMDs is established (and people seem to love it) but is a bigger initial outlay ($25K for hardware, IT help, backup...). Anyone have any thoughts?

-- M.D.www.elainemd.comOffice: Go in the directions of your dreams and live the life you've imagined.

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