The article about Pediatric Associates in CA has a nugget with a potentially outsized impact: the implication that VFC vaccines…
News 1/31/13
From LightsOut: “iPractice Group. The company posted a notice on its Website that it has ceased operations as a result of ‘depressed sales in the late 4th quarter leading to insufficient funding to continue operations.’” Between market saturation, practice consolidations, and MU requirements, I am certain that iPractice will not be the only EHR vendor to close up shop this year.
Huron Valley Physicians Association (MI) chooses eClinicalWorks EHR for its 600 providers. eClinicalWorks also announces that Holyoke Medical Center (MA) is adding eCW Care Coordination Medical Record for advancing ACO and PCMH objectives.
The website Software Advice scrubs CMS data on MU attestations through October 2012 to identify the top ambulatory EHR vendors. Epic, Allscripts, and eClinicalWorks had the most complete EHR MU attestations and accounted for 42 percent of all attestations. A total of 355 vendors had at least one attestation, though two-thirds of all attestations came from the top 10.
MacPractice and RT-MediBus integrate their MacPractice PMS and RT-MediBus EHR programs.
Cara Buckhaulter, a medical billing and coding consultant with Nuesoft, offers some tips for boosting practice revenues, decreasing rejected and underpaid claims, and reducing claims A/R days. Recommended steps include verifying insurance, submitting claims daily, following up promptly on rejected or unpaid claims, reviewing codes semiannually, and monitoring financial reports monthly.
Medical Office Today profiles NextGen customer Associates in Women’s Health (KS) and its use of NextGen’s NextPen digital pen technology.
SOAPware will implement the ELLKAY connectivity bridge for its EHR clients to provide integration with third-party PM systems.
CPA B.J. Hoffman suggests some internal control procedures to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse in medical practices. The bottom line: physicians should regularly review key financial documents and staff should segregate financial tasks to ensure proper checks and balances.
Re: the Software Advice article and table- the article is actually a worthwhile read. These tables have been done before, with the number of attestations and percent of attestations showing the big hospital users at the top. Inga, I know you have done some similar number-crunching on your own.
These EMR’s promise they will get your incentive money, but the degree of success is variable- and often low. How about a story on the column that doesn’t appear in these tables? That would be the % of users of a given EMR that are successful in attesting. Something just doesn’t add-up. E-Clinical claims 70k users; Practice Fusion claims “over 150,000 medical professionals”. Then they brag about how much money their EP’s make in attestation (PF says “over $100 million in government incentives”). If they have that many users, then only 13% of EClinical’s users have been successful in attesting, and a paltry 2% of PF’s users have succeeded. (And somehow those 3k PF attesters are averaging $33k each in incentives- another set of numbers which isn’t consistent with reality). At the other extreme is a program like Amazing Charts which has under 6000 users, well over 20% of whom successfully attested.
Sure, not everyone using these EMR’s has an intention of going for the incentives….but every one of the companies brags that their product will get you the money. Some are just more honest about it than others.