For practices that specialize in outpatient services, including occupational, speech, and physical therapy, WebPT has a platform that’s ready to use. This is a web-based solution, so personnel at the practice can access it using a multitude of devices. It has a strong customer service reputation, offering access to support at any time.

Pros

• Extremely reasonably priced
• Made specifically for outpatient practices
• Includes access through mobile devices, if needed
• Interface makes it easy to spot the information you need

Cons

• Some aspects of the software are restrictive in how you must enter data
• Not going to work as well for inpatient types of practices

How to Choose The Best EMR System For You

Finding the best electronic medical records system for your particular practice becomes easier when you focus on the specific needs of your practice. Figure out which areas of your practice need the most help, and focus on an EMR system that excels in those areas.

Here are 10 of the areas we weighed when creating our list of the best EMR systems.

1. Automatic Reminders

A big part of managing a patient’s care is maintaining a regular schedule of appointments. With certain EMR systems, you can set up an automatic reminder system that alerts the patient about upcoming appointments or about reminders to set an appointment. The EMR system could send a text message, make an automated call, or send an email to the patient, depending on the patient’s preference.

Automatic reminders will save time for the staff at the practice, freeing them up for other tasks. These reminders also reduce the number of appointments that patients forget about and miss, which makes your practice more efficient.

2. Scanning Documents

By selecting an EMR system that allows for document scanning, you will be able to match whatever needs your billing system requires for supporting documentation for claims.

Rather than submitting these documents via fax, printout, or email, you can simply digitize them and add them to the patient’s EMR. Should the billing service need these documents for an insurance claim, they will be readily available, eliminating wasted time and the potential for lost documents.

3. Sending Prescriptions

Within the majority of EMR systems, you will have the option of submitting patient prescription drug orders electronically to the pharmacy, using an e-prescription system.

Sending prescriptions electronically is safe and efficient, ensuring that the order for controlled substances travels only to the patient’s pharmacy of choice, eliminating the chance of the patient losing a handwritten prescription.

With an e-prescription, you also eliminate the chance of an error at the pharmacy because of unreadable handwriting on the part of a doctor.

4. Specialty Practices

If your practice has a specific area in which it operates, you may need to track atypical data about patients.

You may need an EMR system that gives you the ability to customize data fields and to adjust how the system stores the data. A vendor may need to help you customize the system after installation, so if you have special needs for tracking data, always ask the vendor about how it handles this type of situation.

In other cases, the vendor may have a specialty specific EMR system or add-on service that will perfectly meet your needs. Tracking this type of information can be a significant hindrance to your practice when you must do it by hand, so having an EMR system that can match your specific needs is incredibly important.

5. Systems Integration

If your EMR system has the ability to integrate with multiple systems already in use at your practice, this streamlines record keeping.

This feature is especially important for meshing the EMR system with the billing system you have in place, for example. Whether your practice sends its billing information to an outside service or does billing in-house, having integration between the EMR system and the billing system saves quite a bit of time and reduces coding errors.

Should your practice have an affiliation with a larger network, such as a hospital, integrating your EMR with the hospital’s system simplifies the patient care process. The EMR vendor can help you figure out how its system may be able to integrate with other systems you already have in place.

6. Task Reminders

Every medical practice has hundreds, if not thousands, of mundane tasks to perform on a daily basis. Whether you’re awaiting results from tests sent to an off-site lab or you need reminders to check with other colleagues about a patient’s status, certain EMR systems make this process far easier than others.

With timestamp deadlines attached to the various reminders, a doctor can be certain to have all of the required tasks finished regarding a certain patient’s case before it’s time for the patient’s appointment. With the tasks finished ahead of time, the doctor will not waste time searching for information or making calls while the patient sits idle in the exam room.

7. Template Creation

Say your practice sees a certain type of disease or condition on a regular basis in the community. With the right EMR system, the medical team could create a template that contains information about treating the particular condition, ensuring that all of the doctors and nurses follow the same steps.

This saves time in treating this common condition, while also reducing the possibility of mistakes.

8. Tracking Patient Flow

Something that you may not think about when comparing EMR systems is the way they can track patients flowing through your office.

For example, you don’t want patients occupying exam rooms waiting for a certain doctor, when that doctor cannot see the patient for at least 45 minutes, leaving other patients stuck in the waiting room, rather than being in an exam room, receiving treatment from other doctors.

Your EMR system may be able show exactly where bottlenecks are occurring in the patient flow in your office, helping you become more efficient. However, this is not a feature that all EMRs will provide in an easy-to-understand manner.

9. Tracking Prescriptions

When you have patients who take multiple prescription drugs, keeping on top of potential side effects and drug interactions is a time consuming process. Before the advent of EMR systems, the patient may have given a hand-printed list of drugs to the doctor for inclusion in the patient file. The list may or may not have been accurate or up to date.

By selecting an EMR system that allows prescription drug tracking within the patient’s records, spotting drug interactions will be easier and will occur in a timely manner. Doctors also can see any drugs the patient has tried in the past that did not work or that created unwanted side effects, avoiding trying those drugs again in the future.

Additionally, should a patient show an allergy to a certain class of drug, this information is readily available to the doctor in the digitized patient record. No longer will the doctor need to rely on a patient’s memory regarding drug allergies, which may lead to errors.

10. Vendor Responsiveness

Picking the right vendor is an extremely important part of choosing the EMR system as well. Even if the EMR system is great, it will be nothing but a headache for your practice if the vendor support is not up to par.

Some practices need more responsiveness from the vendor than others. Some practices want to be able to access help or to ask questions of the vendor any day of the week and any time of the day. Others may be able to live with a vendor that’s only accessible during normal working hours.

If your practice does not have a person or department that handles IT, you may be able to hire a vendor that can deliver these features for you.

Summary: Finding the Best EMR Systems

Although you will find some vendors attempting to use the terms EMR and EHR (electronic health records) interchangeably, they technically have a few differences that you should understand.

• EMR systems: With an EMR system, a single practice will digitize the patient’s chart. This includes all of the information about the patient’s medical history from doctors at the practice only.
• EHR systems: With an EHR system, you’ll have the digitized patient chart found in EMR, but you’ll find records from all doctors who have treated the patient. Multiple practices may share the patient’s EHR with each other.

The EMR system simplifies the ability of a single practice to care for the patient, helping the practice send out reminders to the patient for upcoming tests or health screenings. Finding just the right EMR system will produce significant benefits for patients and for those working in your practice, making the process of caring for patients more streamlined and more successful in the long run.

Source: quicksprout

The Best EMR Systems