Article

August 1, 2007

Toward an Electronic Patient Record Conference 2005: Key Presentations and Vendor Highlights

Below, you will find a sampling of some of the nations most innovative healthcare technology companies that showcased their products at the 2005 TEPR conference. Weve chosen companies...

Vendor Highlights

Below, you will find a sampling of some of the nation’s most innovative healthcare technology companies that showcased their products at the 2005 TEPR conference. We’ve chosen companies at the forefront of EMR systems and technologies, the better to prepare you in your search for solutions to make your practice more patient-centered and more efficient.

Patient Charts

Amazing Charts

Amazing Charts is designed to function like a real private practice. Forget jumping from window to window to document your note or clicking through levels of locked medical terms to document your visit; Amazing Charts offers both pre-designed and easy-to-build, customizable templates to facilitate the documentation process in a way that makes charting easy, intuitive, and powerful.

Special tabs take you directly to Patient Demo-graphics, Summary & Problem List, Prior Encounters, Imported Items, and Account/Billing Information. Amazing Charts always opens with the patient’s most recent encounter; these “progressive” notes allow users to update information quickly and efficiently and facilitate E&M coding.

Amazing Charts is free to download.

Notebooks/Tablets

Fujitsu

The latest high-performance pen tablet and touch screen products, such as the LifeBook ST5000 and B6000 series, continue to lead the way in streamlining and increasing the efficiency and quality of patient care in various healthcare facilities. The B6000 series of ultra-portable touch screen notebooks is ideal for healthcare workplaces. The 3.3-pound notebook features a larger, 50% brighter screen and an exceptionally long battery life and delivers the flexibility of a touch screen and the productivity of a notebook.

The LifeBook B6000 notebook features a multitude of security capabilities to keep confidential data protected. The notebook comes Smart Card-ready; incorporates embedded Trusted Platform Module technology; offers an optional biometric fingerprint swipe sensor; and integrates the Fujitsu Security Application Panel with more than 800,000 possible combinations with supervisor and user password levels.

Visit www.fujitsu.com to find out more about these and other offerings from Fujitsu.

Motion Computing Tablets Bring Real-Time Patient Information to the Point-of-Care

Motion Computing is bringing real-time information to the point of care through its ultramobile LE1600 tablet PC. The LE1600 builds on the most innovative features and improves on the widely acclaimed design of Motion Computing’s award-winning M-series platform.

Using the LE1600, healthcare professionals can: Automate paperwork and access patient files wirelessly

• Convert paper forms to electronic forms

• Use the digital pen to input information directly to patient files and medical applications, reducing the turnaround time of important data and billing information

• Streamline workflows through automation of key clinical practices

• Minimize research and documentation time

• Comply with industry regulations regarding patient privacy

ePrescribing

RxNT

RxNT’s e-prescribing product helps reduce costs by allowing the physician to write prescriptions quickly and transmit them directly to the patient’s pharmacy of choice while detecting drug and food interactions and identifying allergic reactions for each patient.

Thomas Freytag, MD, an RxNT user, claims the product has reduced errors by generating legible prescriptions, while listing potential interactions as well as formulary status. Prescriptions for patients on multiple medications are generated quickly and easily, while maintaining a patient specific medication list.

RxNT offers an integrated multi-platform product that arms healthcare providers of all sizes with a flexible, cost-effective solution. High-speed Internet mobile prescriber features include wireless Pocket PC, wireless Tablet PC, and wireless/cell phone Palm OS functionality.

Why wait? Get started today! Contact RxNT via phone 410.255.7600; via fax 410.255.2223; or via web.

Zix Corporation: e-Prescribing and Secure Email Capabilities

ZixCorp’s PocketScript e-prescribing application helps prevent the most common prescription problems, including time-consuming call-backs from pharmacists.

PocketScript helps both physicians and staff members by:

• Eliminating rejections due to legibility, drug incompatibility, or ineligibility

• Checking drug—drug interaction and drug–allergy automatically

• Checking real-time formulary compliance automatically

• Offering a built-in drug reference guide

• Including medication lists from all physicians

• Transmitting prescriptions immediately and electronically to the pharmacy

ZixCorp also helps organizations meet the security rules of HIPAA with easy-to-use e-mail encryption services through such products as ZixVPM (Virtual Private Messenger) and ZixMail.

Find out more about Zix Corporation’s PocketScript and other eHealth solutions.

Workflow Management

Siemens Medical Solutions’ Soarian Health Information Solution Drives Workflow Management

Siemens Medical Solutions' new generation health information technology solution, Soarian, integrates clinical, financial, diagnostic, and administrative processes to support patient-centered care.

Soarian is distinguished by managing processes and best practices across the health enterprise through workflow management tools; enabling increased ease of use and faster training via a smart user interface; and helping to manage and measure the events and activities of the organization through embedded analytics. Additionally, Soarian brings together images and data seamlessly from a variety of medical modalities in one location—leading to improved care delivery, increased staff satisfaction, and more efficient business practices.

Zynx Health: Evidence-Based Decision Support Solutions

Zynx Health’s clinical decision support solutions include an advanced, evidence-based clinical decision support system for developing and maintaining order sets, reminders, and alerts. Hospitals nationwide use Zynx Health’s easy-to-navigate, secure online site and updated evidence synopses to develop and maintain customized order sets that conform to local organizational practices. Zynx Health’s Primary Care clinical decision support tool addresses a wide range of performance measures and covers various topics in ambulatory acute management, ambulatory chronic management, and preventive care and screening.

For more information on how Zynx Health can help you optimize pay-for-performance reimbursement and measurably improve the quality of patient care, visit www.zynx.com or call 888-333-ZYNX.

Wireless Access

Cingular Delivers High-Speed Data Access to Medical Professionals Beyond Hospital or Office

Cingular Wireless offers high-speed, nationwide wireless access to critical patient information; offerings from leading mobile healthcare solution providers Epocrates Inc., HealthRamp, Inc., and PatientKeeper were demonstrated at TEPR 2005.

Healthcare solutions certified on the Cingular Wireless GPRS/EDGE network include:

• PatientKeeper: the PatientKeeper Platform supports a broad portfolio of applications, providing wireless access to patient and clinical information. The PatientKeeper Platform secured first place in the show’s TEPR 2005 Award in the category of Mobile Applications for Use in Healthcare.

• Epocrates: the Epocrates Essentials mobile clinical reference suite allows clinicians to receive regular updates of vital drug, disease, and diagnostics information on their wireless handhelds.

• HealthRamp: CarePoint provides HIPAA-compliant e-prescribing from a physician’s wireless handheld, including prescription drug interaction information, drug reference guide, patient medication history, and formulary referencing.

TEPR 2005 Recap

Beyond HIPAA Security: Higher Standards for EMRs

Link Code: a7514

Presenter: Wayne Mackert, iTM Healthcare/iTech Management, LLC

Recap: This presentation addressed what physicians who have an EMR must do in order to keep their information safe, as the 2005 HIPAA security rules “are two years old and the security landscape has already passed them by.” Mackert explained that healthcare IT organizations must determine if their solutions vendors have sufficient security practice and can meet their internal security requirements, which must be documented and well defined. “Remember [that] HIPAA compliance is your responsibility, not your vendor’s,” he added. The speaker recommended the use of an independent third party security assessment. Mackert also noted that before installing any updates or new releases, one must receive full “disclosure of the current EMR security posture by the vendor and possible new security assessment of their standard deployment.” The presenter explained that EMR security “will be a journey, not a destination.”

EHRs: The Case for Real ROI

Link Code: a7515

Presenter: Mark A. Bloomberg, MD, MBA, FACPE

Recap: Dr. Bloomberg explained that increased ROI with EHRs allows for less office overhead; utilizes sweat equity; defrays cost over providers or offices; requires less data entry time; allows for higher quality claims submission and smarter coding; enables audit-proof chart documentation; and more. EHR systems are now less expensive; are “more intuitive with a much greater ease of transition;” include hardware that is lighter, more powerful, cheaper, and totally mobile; come with software that is more powerful, flexible, and easily adaptable to individual physicians; and allow for much easier demonstration of ROI, according to Dr. Bloomberg. To increase revenue, he recommended that physicians examine their practice style and work processes; identify where significant time is wasted; determine where improvements could be made; evaluate “the role EHRs could play in these areas;” and calculate “potential ROI based on the infrastructure investment and increased revenues due to process improvement.”

Getting the Patient Data You Need for Decision Support

Link Code: a7516

Presenter: Allen R. Wenner, MD

Recap: “Only with discrete data can meaningful decision support occur,” stated Dr. Wenner, and individual “medical symptoms, physical findings and diagnoses are only a few of the precise values that describe the minutia of a patient’s medical record.” Though paper record systems have tried to catalog such information, none facilitated subsequent analysis with efficient use of computers, added Dr. Wenner. Recently, EMR systems— requiring data entry by trained persons for recording discrete information—have attempted to digitize the old regime. “Web-based patient interview software can be a component of any medical record system enabling patients to answer simple, multiple choice questions on the Internet about their medical and present illness history that can be recorded as discrete, codified elements into any data repository,” Dr. Wenner explained. With this software, medical history can be completed and goals realized before the physician ever sees the patient, allowing for point-of-care decision support.

The Global e-Pharmacy: A Working EHR System

Link Code: a7517

Presenter: Timothy S. Vasko, CEO, E-Health Online, Inc.

Recap: “An exceptional example of a vibrant, integrated EHR system is the ‘rogue’ community of health care services and clients that make up the ‘global e-pharmacy’ sector,” began Vasko, who added that “innovators in the sector have developed advanced technology and systems.” With virtually no need for paper, these systems enable orders to be placed, tasks to be delegated, inventory to be maintained, and prescriptions to be viewed and signed by a physician, resulting in greater savings and convenience for the patient, according to the speaker; an electronic health record is established that can be accessed anytime by the patient’s physician, pharmacist, or other healthcare professional. “As so often happens, market forces, coupled with an ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ attitude, have forced mainstream institutions to seek out and appropriate the best ‘outside-the-box’ solutions,” continued the speaker. “This is happening rapidly in the Internet pharmacy sector. All the players (customers, pharmacies, doctors), motivated by self interest and market forces, have enthusiastically adopted new technology and become co-trailblazers in establishing a vibrant EHR system.”

Health Information Exchange & EMR Optimization

Link Code: a7518

Presenter: Michael Mytych, Health Information Consulting, LLC

Recap: “There are over 100 vendors selling EMRs/ EHRs to physicians’ clinics,” noted Mr. Mytych, adding that it is rare that any one will have a dominant market share. As the rate of EMR deployment increases, so will the demand for continuum of care records (CCRs), and for “EMRs to fulfill their role in promoting a safer patient experience, they must be able to account for as much of the patient continuum of care as possible, including the retention of all active medications that can be accounted for by clinical decision support software,” he explained. With that in mind, a physician must know what the regional health information organization health information exchange will and will not offer and observe the progress of the vendors to meet interoperable standards, according to the speaker. “More than likely, the CCR will not totally meet the needs of private physician EMRs,” he noted. “EMR vendors will need time to map to industry standards.”

More for Less: Using Integrated Products to Improve Care, Workflow, and Reimbursement

Link Code: a7519

Presenter: Maggie Blackburn, MD, FAAFP

Recap: According to Dr. Blackburn, peripheral devices help to improve point-of-care service, compliance, and follow up; increase reimbursement even in small office practices; and remove obstacles to accessing services. To back up these statements, she discussed spirometry and the Brentwood EKG, a “compact, portable, real time digital 12-lead EKG unit.” During set up for patients receiving a subsequent EKG, vitals such as blood pressure and weight are automatically entered if they were taken in the past month. When viewing the EKG, users can freeze and unfreeze the image as needed, analyze whenever they’re ready, and view sequential EKGs; text can also be edited if necessary. The latest spirometry devices incorporate a light, portable, and compact unit; are easy to use; include pre- and post-testing capabilities; offer feedback on test quality; and allow the user to edit the narrative report, stated Dr. Blackburn. Peripheral devices such as the Brentwood EKG and those utilized in spirometry are easy to use and offer seamless integration, easy access to reports at any time, and point-of-care service that improves quality of care.

2005 TEPR Awards Recognize Outstanding Healthcare Information Solutions

Mobile Applications for Use in Healthcare

1st Honors: PatientKeeper

2nd Honors: Allscripts Healthcare Solutions

3rd Honors: Midmark Diagnostic Group

E-Prescription Management Systems

1st Honors: eClinicalWorks

2nd Honors: DrFirst

3rd Honors: Allscripts Healthcare Solutions

EHR Systems for Small Practices

1st Honors: eClinicalWorks

2nd Honors: Physician Micro Systems