News 3/23/10

Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (FL) chooses Allscripts PM/EHR for its 106 providers and 33 family medicine residents

A recent AMA provides a few tips for physicians wanting to offer online consultations – and get paid for them:

• e-mail exchanges must address specific problems not associated with a prior visit, either on-line or in the office, within the previous seven days
• practices are typically charging about the same as a patient copay for online consults; other practices offer unlimited email options for an established fee
• not every managed care plan allow practices to offer email consults, so check your plans
• have patients sign a consent form describing what services can be rendered through online consults and how they will be billed
• specify an established turnaround time for emails
• make sure the email exchange becomes part of the patient’s permanent medical record.

Dr. Brian Yeaman of Norman Physician Hospital Organization (NPHO) shares details of the EHR database his organizes uses to facilitate record sharing with Norman Regional Health System (OK.) The organizations went live on a connected network in December and is currently installed in 100 practitioner offices. The health system, including the ED is also tied in. Yearman calls the setup “powerful.”

Here’s a smartphone app that sounds cooler than it actually is (at least after my five minute assessment.) The American Society of Health Informatics Managers, Inc. (ASHIM) releases a free application that “enables Health IT Consultants to help physicians select” an EHR. The application, called EHRBook, produces names of products based on a keyword search. It appears you can only put in a single keyword, e.g., e-prescribing, and not something more specific  like e-prescribing, family practice, and CCHIT.  The result is merely a list of vendors and hardly enough data to help anyone actually select an EHR. Perhaps the next version will offer more meat.

A North Carolina doctor sues Secure Telemedicine, a telemedicine company that the doctor says convinced him it was legal to offer medical consultations and write prescriptions by telephone. The doctor claims Secure Telemedicine solicited him to provide consults and provided him with legal opinions that claimed the medical services provided were legal. Eventually the NC Medical Board and four other states suspended his license for prescribing controlled substances without physical exams or any prior physician-patient relationships. The doctor is suing for Secure Telemedicine for unfair and deceptive trade practices and is seeking payment for the damages made to professional reputation, plus treble damages for legal costs.

Zotec Partners announces that four radiology groups have signed five year renewals for Zotec’s billing and practice management tools.

University Physicians & Surgeons, the 200+ member faculty practice of Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, selects McKesson’s billing and PM services.

WEBeDoctor releases WEBeVision, a web-based EMR solution for eye care professionals.

athenahealth launches athenaCommunicator, a patient communication service that integrates with athenahealth’s PM and EHRs. The tool includes a web portal, automated messaging services, and a live operator option.

Consulting firm Concordant introduces EHRopt, a Web portal support tool to help physician practices implement EHRs.

Humedica and AMGA subsidiary Anceta launch Humedia MinedShared Ambulatory, as well as Anceta Collaborative Data Warehouse. The tools will provide clinical, operational and financial benchmarking tools and comparative analytics for medical groups.

E-mail Inga.