I've been getting a lot of questions about EMR. As we all know, the government is aggressively pushing for everyone to utilize EMR. I reached out to my friend, Bert Lurch, the CEO of E Central Medical Management, Inc. and asked him to provide some general information on EMR.
Bert said that in his mind the top three reasons why EMRs are being prioritized are to:
1. Reduce paperwork, which will hopefully decrease inefficiency;
2. Allow doctors to have "educated" and "interactive" medical charts,
in that the doctors will be able to see and track trends in their practices;
and
3. Encourage practices to submit claims faster since coding will be done by the EMR software which alleviates the charge entry step.
The conversation about EMRs is intrinsically tied in with technology. Some of the best technology Bert has seen is the Tablet PC, which allows doctors to move from room to room and mark their tablet to generate their medical record for the patient they are seeing. Since coding requires that certain processes are covered in a medical record for a doctor to receive a certain reimbursement level, EMRs are hopefully going to make the record generating process easier through the use of templates. In fact, Bert is hopeful that accusations of up-coding will be less frequent once templates are the norm for medical practices.
Bert recommends some of the larger EMR companies, such as EClinical Works (which is moderately expensive compared to other companies out there), GE Centricity and Medavant, but chooses to utilize for his business ECM SequelMed.
ECM SequelMed is a smaller company that is gaining in popularity in New York and provides their clients with superior hands-on support.
Bert will continue to comment on EMR for us as more information becomes available. Should you have any questions, comments or stories about your experiences with EMR please do not hesitate to send them over. I would love to be able to provide all of the list participants with advice on EMR from different doctor's experiences.
If you have any questions for Bert directly he can be reached at bertl@ecmmgt.com or (718) 525-8567.
The above information is for educational and discussion purposes only, and does not constitute legal advice.
