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The ‘medical home’ model of health care is viewed by many as one of the most promising avenues on the road to providing better patient care while reducing medical costs. As more insurers, corporations and physician groups test the medical home concept, it is moving beyond theory into practice. Vital to the concept’s success is the ability to automate certain patient care processes for preventive care and chronic disease management, without placing an undue burden on the caregiver.

Centralized Point of Care

The medical home provides a centralized point of care for patients and the coordination of their treatment. Computerization of processes such as physician alerts and patient reminders is an essential part of this environment. Studies* show that physician groups implementing an automated system of alerts and reminders delivered higher quality of care to patients, whether they went in for basic care, visited specialists, or required hospitalization. Along with improving the performance of their practices, physician groups in the study also reduced their costs for overall patient care.

If you have an electronic medical records (EMR) system in your practice, it may already have the functionality you need for computerized alerts and reminders. If not, or if you haven’t yet adopted an electronic medical records (EMR) system, you can set up automatic alerts and reminders with the help of a database software application known as a Patient Registry. It doesn’t require special expertise or training to implement, and what’s more, Medicare (PQRI) and other Pay-for-Performance (P4P) programs are now providing financial incentives to use a Patient Registry with alerts and reminders in your practice. When you look for the right software for your practice, there are four areas of functionality you should expect in a reliable system of Alerts and Reminders, described in this article.

Alerts to Caregivers

At the point of care, the system should identify patient-specific suggestions, screening tests, exams, and other preventive services in support of disease management as well as preventive and wellness patient care. The conditions for displaying alerts may be set or modified by the provider, to follow established guidelines or other requirements. Alerts must be individualized to address a patient’s specific clinical situation, and the system should be able to document that a preventive or disease management service has been provided, or overridden, and document the reasons. For example, after a patient has had a complete hysterectomy, the system should be able to remove alerts for an annual pap smear.

Reminders to Patients

Providers should have a straightforward way to create, update, and individualize the rules for patient reminders in the same way as they would for physician alerts. Between healthcare visits, patients should receive automatic notifications of preventive services, tests, or behavioral actions that are due or overdue. The system should have the capability to send notifications by letter or email, and then record their delivery. For patients that prefer to be notified by telephone, the system would generate a printed patient list.

Individualized Patient Visit Plans

Visit Plans bring relevant patient information together with guidelines for managing each patient’s conditions at the point of care. The Visit Plan includes a summary of the patient’s key clinical indicators (medications, test results), with suggestions to be presented at the point of care. In situations where the computer system is not used at the point of care, Visit Plans can be printed in advance, allowing clinical personnel to prepare for each visit, and providing alerts. It should be possible to print Visit Plans for one or all of the patients scheduled for a particular day, or for a period of time over the course of treatment.

Prepared and Ad-hoc Patient Care Reports

Easy access to relevant reports, both prepared and ad-hoc, helps physicians identify patients who need special attention. These reports measure changes in the practice’s performance and results against clinical guidelines. For example, if a physician can view a report monitoring diabetic patients with glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) over 8%, he can quickly determine if they are receiving proper care with regular testing and proactive disease management, regardless of whether they have a scheduled appointment or what brings them to the office.

Benefits of Easy Automation Demographic data and patient problem information should be obtained from the practice’s billing system or an integrated EMR system, with no need for separate data entry. Clinical information can be obtained from an integrated EMR. Although Alerts and Reminders can often be generated without access to clinical information (using only age, sex, and codes from the billing process), the value of utilizing lab results is clear. Patient data can be entered or updated quickly, without interrupting the process of care. The computer system generates automatic reminders whether or not a patient has a scheduled appointment. Providers can specify or cancel patient reminders, or change treatment description and frequency recommendations, at any time, without programmer assistance.

If you are moving toward the medical home concept, now you can automate certain patient care processes for preventive care and chronic disease management, without placing an undue burden on you and your practice. With these guidelines in mind, you can implement a computerized system of alerts and reminders in your practice, and be on the road to providing better overall patient care while reducing medical costs.

Highlighs of Two Studies

*Use of reminders for preventive procedures in family medicine.
Robert W. Shepherd, MD., Canadian Medical Association Journal

Hospital Center for Family Medicine 5883 patients 1-year study of computerized reminders for preventive care Up to 42% improvement in delivery of preventive services

Use of reminders for preventive procedures in family medicine. Robert W. Shepherd, MD. CMAJ. 1991 Oct 1;145(7):807-814. [PubMed]

*A computerized reminder system to increase the use of preventive care for hospitalized patients.
Dexter PR, Perkins S, Overhage JM, Maharry K, Kohler RB, McDonald CJ.

Department of Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine, Regenstrief Institute for Health Care, Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Indianapolis 46202, USA.

General Medicine Service 6371 patients 18-month study of computerized reminders for four preventive therapies 53.6% of patients eligible for preventive measures identified 51.4% improved ordering rate for patients indicated for a flu vaccination

New England Journal of Medicine. 2001 Sep 27;345(13):965-70. PMID: 11575289 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

* VersaForm currently offers several medical software applications which can be downloaded at no charge from the company’s website: Medical Software.

The integration of electronic medical records software is supposed to be the advent of a more efficient and productive medical practice. As one of President Barack Obama’s campaign for the reformation of healthcare is the integration of the Electronic Medical Records software into the healthcare delivery system all over the country. This means full automation of medical practice and letting go of the traditional austere paper-based medical records. However, it seems that not all are ready to embrace the incorporation of the electronic medical records software into the healthcare delivery system. There are a lot of factors as to why some of the institution’s staff are resistant to the EMR and these factors can be narrowed down into 3 common factors.

First is the personality behavior issue, the staff’s aversion and insolence towards the EMR. They think that they know more about their patients and how they should carryout their duties and responsibilities and perform their functions than the electronic medical records. Sad to say but, there are other things that the electronic medial records know than your staff. For example; nowadays, a lot of pharmaceutical industries have sprouted from all over the globe and each of these pharmaceutical companies manufacture different drugs. Sometimes, it takes a while before these drugs are listed in the drug handbooks including their potential drug reactions, interactions as well as adverse effects. With electronic medical records software, an up to date drug database is made available to be used as reference by the prescribing physicians and medication nurses. Bottom line is, not all the time these so-called “the best staffs” are on top of the game. They should also learn how to accept change and deal with that change.

Another factor that affects the staff’s acceptance for the electronic medical records is their inability to comprehend as to how the EMR works and their lack of knowledge regarding the many benefits that it has to offer the institution. It is true that the concept of EMR is new to almost everybody who is involved in the care of the patient. However, electronic medical records software can be learned in a variety of ways. The internet is one resource that your staff can use to know more as to how the software works including its wide array of benefits. As a matter of fact, some of the most beneficial advantages of the integration of the electronic medical records into the healthcare network are the provision of optimum patient care and efficiency in work.

The third factor that causes the resistance to EMR is that your staff views the software as a threat. They try to protect their own interest instead of aiming for the success of the project. There are various reasons as to why such negative behavior exists. It could be that they’d rather stick to what they are used to doing rather than try out on something new. It could also be that they feel that their old ways are much more comfortable and that they wouldn’t want to start anew. Or it could be that they are afraid that the new technology would replace them and so they wouldn’t want to risk losing their jobs. The only way to deal with this problem is to communicate with them. Explain to your staff that there is nothing that they can do about the change but to embrace it. As what President Obama mentioned in one of his healthcare campaigns, the US government’s goal in 5 years time is to fully automate all healthcare institutions.

Stop the arrogance, there’s more to electronic medical records than what you think. Enough with the ignorance, it’s never too late to learn about EMR. Cease the turf protection, the electronic medical records software is meant to ease up the workflow of medical practice, not to replace you.

You will often find most EMR vendors as well as Physicians using EMR System and EMR Software interchangeably leading the readers to believe that they stand for the same product.  In fact, as explained below, they are quite different and in fact EMR Software is one of the components of an EMR System.

The term “system” originates from the Greek term syst¯ema, which means to “place together” and defines a system as an integrated set of interoperable elements, each with explicitly specified and pre-defined capabilities, working seamlessly to perform value-added processing to enable a user to achieve set objectives.

What is EMR System?

An Electronic Medical Records (EMR) System includes the following components:

Infrastructure – Physical and hardware system components, for example, Workstations and Servers, Tablet PC, Laptops, Monitors, Scanners, Networking components like Routers and Bridges, etc. Software – Application software (EMR or EHR Software), Operating System software (Windows 2003 server, for example), utilities, and other applications like Instant Messaging, Fax Servers, Networking Software, Lab interfaces (with Quest, Labcorp), ePrescription, etc.. People – Personnel involved in using, maintaining or managing the EMR – this includes the Clinical and administrative staff, Physicians, etc . All these people need to receive appropriate level of training in order to use the EMR effectively. Business Processes – Guidelines, instructions, and steps involved in keeping the EMR System running smoothly. This includes patient appointment scheduling, appointment reminders, billing, co-pay, etc. Data – Information captured, used, and supported by a system, including documents, images and databases.

It is clearly evident that EMR software is just one component of an EMR System and is therefore only one of the components of an EMR System. It is simply not good enough to assemble motley of ill-fitting components in a Clinic and expect them to make your operations more efficient since the various components may not work seamlessly and will certainly not perform value added processing.

When Physicians buy EMR Software from EMR Vendors, they will typically get the following:

EMR or EHR Software (Application software) Application Database (with required Database objects like files, triggers, procedures, etc.) Configurable Lab and Pharmacy interfaces Specifications of recommended commonly required and used hardware and software

As you can see, there is a vast difference between the components listed above (as part of an EMR System) and what the EMR Vendors will typically provide.

Physicians can provide quality healthcare to their patients but do not have the necessary expertise to assemble all the components required to build and implement an EMR System that will integrate all the required pieces of hardware and software. It is a collaborative exercise that requires close co-operation between the EMR vendor, Clinical Staff, Administrative (Billing) Staff, Information Technology (IT) Support staff, Physicians, etc.

By working with an expert EMR Consulting company or an EMR Systems Integrator to build and integrate all required components of a customized EMR System, physicians can reduce the risk involved with any Systems Integration project, ensure successful implementation and maximize their return on investment from EMR or EHR Software deployment.

Audio-to-Text conversion or transcriptions the other name to it, is providing employment to many people around the world, for instance in the US it is estimated to be a $10.6 billion industry. In India or Philippines many companies are providing the service online, and professionals in US have been soliciting services from these countries because of the low wage labor available in these countries.

In India for instance, home based transcribers have high-speed internet access and many of them are providing services for audio-to-text conversion to doctors, attorneys and multimedia professionals. The multimedia companies in the US were paying as much as $90 for an hour of audio to convert into text, and the Indians are willing to do it for as less as $60.

Many doctors in the US are using Indians for medical transcriptions. The main criterion for choosing them is the low pricing of 8¢ to 9¢ a line paid to the Indians. In comparison the medical transcribers in US charge 15¢ to 16¢ a line. The pricing is just one aspect of choosing offshore transcribers, the zonal time difference is the other consideration doctors and media professionals benefit from.

The 10 to 12 hour time difference helps them in scheduling rush assignments to the off shore companies, the completed assignments become available the following morning, radiologist in particular weigh this aspect  more than other professionals, because referring physicians require clinical test reports of patients as quickly as possible. Since India has a large English speaking workforce, the quality of audio-to-text conversion is as good as any US company provides.

Keeping important clients such as pharmaceutical companies, Durable Medical Equipment Companies, Medical Suppliers and office solution team members up to date with scheduling and patient needs is just as important as keeping the patients informed on important changes that may be happening within your practice.

A autodialer system such as a Broadcast by Phone Autodialer allows you to create unique messages to be send to all clients all by the touch of a button and utilizing a few programming techniques. An autodialer uses VOIP or Skype as a way of connecting with callers via a broadband connection over the internet, so staff can work remotely from their own computers following though with client calls and additional support.

An autodialer software system allows the programmer to see who all has been called, when they were called and the confirmation and status of the phone call to display that they answered the call and received the message.

If the client received the message they will then be directed to a series of prompts in which to choose from so that they can leave their choice without having to call in and speak with a live person. The software then stores responses and confirms what the caller designated to do, this allows staff to follow through with the caller and schedule an appointment or then answer questions as needed.

There are several reasons as to utilize an autodialer to help increase overall productivity in your medical practice.

Alerts the public that your practice is accepting new patients- An autodialer is perfect for cold calling people in the area and letting them know that your practice is accepting new patients. Set up the software system to only call so many potential clients and patients at a time so that you do not have a large influx of calls coming in initially. There is also a feature where the caller can opt out so that they will not receive ongoing calls.

Notify DME companies of pickup and deliveries- An autodialer serves as a powerful tool for letting Durable Medical Companies know when to pick up equipment from patients homes or from the office. A generalized service can be implemented as well as individualized messages pertaining to each company.

Keeps patients informed- Another benefit to using an autodialer is that you can set up the system to call patients on days when the office will be closed due to increment weather or physician emergencies. This will give them the chance to automatically reschedule their appointments as well as renew prescriptions over the phone without ever having to come into the office.

Convenience, portability and efficiency are essential assets to using an autodialer system. Make your medical practice run smoothly for patients, staff clients and most of all you.

  Why MediGate-HMS ?

1)   World’s First Ever Mid-Segment Hospital Management System

2)   Easy to learn & Operate-No Training Required

3)   Highly Modular- To Suit Each Hospital’s Need

4)   Best Affordable Price

5)   Multiple Tier Server Architecture-Scale Easily-Thousands of Users

  How MediGate-HMS benefits Customer ?

  Ø Better visibility, control, and efficiency to improve your       services through Enhanced healthcare experience

Ø Provide clinical information to doctors at a mouse – click

Ø Almost Nil – wait time for patient discharge and payment     settlement

  Ø A single- click generated, consolidated bill to the patient for  all services availed.

  Ø Improved hospital administration.

  Ø Reduced administration costs due to better tracking of     expenses.

  Ø Reporting, and effective management of beds and hospital     inventory.

 Ø Mitigating cost and compliance issues.

 Ø Maximized asset utilization through integrated asset     maintenance.

 Ø Improved inventory management by supplier consolidation.

 Ø High-Tech ICU/Ward Alert System.

 Ø Effective monitoring and management of clinical staff.

  Why Choose Us?

  We have overall expertise in the healthcare industry: Pharmacy, Healthcare Product Development and Implementation.  Our large pool  of skilled associates is experienced in designing, implementing, and supporting health care applications.  Our consultants take complete responsibility for analysis, estimation, design and programming, application testing, problem resolution, acceptance, documentation, and status reporting.  They draw from experience and capabilities in healthcare delivery, clinical practice, medical informatics, security and privacy, biomedical engineering, and information technology.

Technology Used :-

Front End :-   Visual Basic .NET (Microsoft .NET 1.1 Framework)

BackEnd  :-   SQL Server 2000 / SQL Server 2005   Can be implemented on LAN / WAN , network based architecture.   Main Modules of the Product (Medigate ) are as follows    In Patient Department  Out Patient Department  Patient Registration            Ward Management  Stores Management  Appointment Schedule      Roaster Management  Hospital Administration  Pharmacy                 ICU Management  OT Management  Purchase Management  Billing  Security  Patient Information System  Nursing  System Administration  Equipment Maintenance  CSSD  MIS

For more info please visits

http://www.chinarsoftech.co.in/medigate.html

Before the software, the process of filing was really tedious and time consuming. Everything was done by hand and with pen and paper and needless to say, it took a lot of time. Patients had to stand in long queues just because there was a person making all the entries.

Now, those lines are no longer visible and there is still a person doing it all. But now that person is equipped with a state of the art computer and every time a patient approaches that person, names and contact details are filed away instantly. There is no waiting to get a receipt of the treatment received or the confirmation of an appointment made.

Before the medical billing software came along, appoints at really busy medical facilities were done by hand. The confusion was great and the efficiency was really low. After all, there is only so much data that a person can handle and pan paper aren’t the fastest of tools. Then came the computers but even then the process was that speedy because of the lack of good software. The person was typing instead of writing and that wasn’t all that much of an improvement.

Now, those appointments are charted and kept track of with optimum efficiency and nothing is misplaced. There are no human errors like the wrong patient to the wrong doctor. There are no backlogged things that need to get done because everything is done in an instant.

Before, the appointment queue wasn’t always very organized and time was wasted if there were cancellations. This meant loss of revenue to the establishment.

Now, there is no loss of time because all cancellations are automatically filled in with those who are waiting in the queue. Hence, there is no wastage of resources and nothing top eat away from your profits.

Before, there were separate people working on the different sections of record keeping. They were divided in to the billing, the appointment scheduling, and the accounts area.

Now, there are still those areas but they reside inside the system. You, the owner can see what is going on from the administrative point of view and run everything quite smoothly. Your staff is reduced to just one or two people, because accounts are usually kept for accountants. But everything else can be done by just one person. Nothing could be simpler than this.

These are a few reasons why all of the health centers, medical clinics, physician offices, and medical billing services that have switched to fulltime use of medical billing software are rejoicing in their choice. Their business now runs much smoother and thanks to the advanced features of the software, everyone is kept happy with the efficient dispensing of resources and error free database management.

This online practice management software known to be medical software is run from the data centers by computers in all offices. This software can be accessed by the web and usually client software is necessary for this. First concern of any of the field is the security. Thus, different hospitals and medical clinics also demand and prefer the security first. The basic purpose of the medical software is to provide the complete solution to the problems of the doctors that they face in managing the records of their patients and the documents related to their field. It has made it possible to do the days work in minutes with the help of medical software.

The medical software gives the surety to its users that the information kept is secure. Now it has become the first concern for many medical professional and the privacy to their work. This is the most commonly used practice management software that is used by doctors, physicians and number of health care providers. All the information that is transferred and saved passes through the secure connections. If any change is made, it can be viewed later on or any one would be made alert if the data is tried to be stolen.

This medical software has a simple interface and is easy to install. But it needs a proper IT staff to run this software so that if any problem occurs you don’t need to run out of your medical institute to get it solved. This software handles your complete system centrally and only one single person has access to the basic data and records. For this also you need a reliable person to handle this practice management system.

The medical software also doesn’t cause the doctors to pay a lot to carry out this online practice. Whereas if he is using the locally home made procedure, it would cost him a lot and will also be a waste of time. To run the manual systems of record keeping, billing and scheduling by the doctors, they also need to have extra work force which is another headache to take care of. There can also be fraud in the manual records of billing and scheduling. Sometimes doctors also lost their patients manual records.

So the best solution for all these problems is given online by developing medical software. It is the best practice management for the health care providers in the age of computers which have increased the pace of work and also made doctors to concentrate on their services by giving more attention to their patients.