“InteGreat EHR V6.5 is first EHR to have true end-to-end integration of the MEDCIN Engine,” said Scott Sanner, Executive Vice President of MED3OOO. “We have had very positive feedback from clients who have been using V6.5 with Quippe to document visits. Physicians are enthusiastic about having a powerful tool that conforms to the way they practice medicine, creates a complete visit record, and provides all the codes required for accurate billing.”

In addition to Quippe integration, other key enhancements include:

• Layout and functionality changes within the Audit Log that meet the CCHIT 2011 standards and improve the retrieval process of audit records.
• An improved layout for the Immunization Schedule View and a new pre-configured Immunization Series that allows for easier tracking of required doses.
• Enhancements to the Health Summary
• Changes to the Intuit Patient Portal that improve patient communication and meet Meaningful Use requirements.
• Additional tracking tools in the Order Requisition application area.
• Numerous other enhancements that enhance workflow and efficiency.

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“By adding the ambulatory domain to our previous hospital certifications, our clients are now able to utilize our EHR module in both clinical and hospital environments,” said David Borden, CTO for MRO. “As the only release-of-information (ROI) company currently certified for Electronic Copy of Health Information and able to deliver patient electronic requests on behalf of hospitals and clinics, we see this as a true win for our clients when evaluating best approaches to meeting the critical meaningful use requirements.”

The ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification program tests and certifies that Complete EHRs meet all of the 2011/2012 criteria and EHR Modules meet one or more – but not all – of the criteria approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) for either eligible provider or hospital technology.

“CCHIT is pleased to be testing and certifying products so that companies are now able to offer these products to providers who wish to purchase and implement certified EHR technology and achieve meaningful use in time for the 2011-2012 incentives,” said Karen M. Bell, M.D., M.S.S., Chair, CCHIT.

ROI Online 2.1.1’s certification number is CC-1112-505110-3. ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification conferred by CCHIT does not represent an endorsement of the certified EHR technology by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nor does it guarantee the receipt of incentive payment.

ROI Online 2.1.1 meets the following certification criteria: Accounting of Disclosures, Electronic Copy of Health Information, Electronic Copy of Discharge Instructions, Timely Access, Access Control, Automatic Log-Off, Audit Log, Integrity, Authentication, General Encryption and Encryption when Exchanging Clinical Information.

The additional software ROI Online 2.1.1 relied upon to demonstrate compliance includes: ABCpdf, HL7Connect, SharpZipLib and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

RelayHealth provides a patient-centric interoperability platform to its health system customers to help enable care coordination throughout the organization and to other local, regional and state exchanges.

Greenway provides information technology solutions and managed business services to ambulatory healthcare providers through its single-database electronic health record and practice management solution PrimeSUITE®, integrating clinical, financial and administrative physician practice workflows and interoperability with labs, physician networks and health systems.

By working together to standardize hospital-clinic connectivity implementation, Greenway and RelayHealth bring key benefits to their customers. For example, hospitals and health systems realize more rapid ambulatory adoption to fulfill hospital alignment strategies, experience reduced need for internal technical resources and can more quickly build rich data for population health management. Ambulatory practices gain an HIE-enabled EHR at go-live and increased care coordination capabilities integrated directly into their PrimeSUITE workflow.

The out-of-the-box, workflow-integrated connectivity advances innovations in total health system integration and expands care coordination goals utilizing standards-based transport protocols required by private and public payer initiatives such as Shared Savings, meaningful use, PQRS and patient-centered medical homes.

“Self Regional Healthcare respects the investment that our aligned physicians have already made in EHR technology and we welcome an interoperability solution immediately compatible to the acute and ambulatory exchange of information,” said Chuck McDevitt, CIO, Self Regional Healthcare, Greenwood, SC. “By leveraging RelayHealth’s vendor-neutral health information exchange, Greenway is helping its customers prepare for meaningful use.”

Health systems such as Baptist Healthcare System, Inc., based in Louisville, KY utilize the combined RelayHealth and Greenway technology for connectivity with its aligned physician practice Lexington OB GYN Associates, for example.

“By adding a new level of pristine interoperability to health system market choices, the collaboration between Greenway and RelayHealth announces to the CIO and provider community that health IT leaders understand our responsibility to provide avenues for a true health information network,” said Greenway(R) President and CEO Tee Green. “I am very excited about this milestone and we are committed to providing a scalable enterprise solution to health systems increasingly seeking to connect continuums of care.”

“The agreement between RelayHealth and Greenway sets a new standard for IT vendor cooperation, with a goal toward a more positive, interoperable experience for all healthcare providers,” said Jeff Felton, president, RelayHealth. “Hospital CIOs and physicians have expressed frustration that IT vendors won’t ‘come to the table’ to get interoperability done. Greenway and RelayHealth are proving that IT vendors can create interoperability across systems, and can do so amicably and without customer frustration.”

The new endocrinology templates were developed with the assistance of practicing specialists to facilitate the management of disorders like thyroid disease and diabetes. While the templates reflect endocrinology best practices, individual providers can also easily customize them to match their own charting workflow and patient needs.

“Practice Fusion actively sought out and took endocrinologist feedback seriously every step of the way,” said Dr. Michael West of The Washington Endocrine Clinic. “Our teamwork on these templates will directly help endocrinologists deliver better care–and, best of all, new users can get started for free in less than five minutes.”

The free EHR has gained popularity among endocrinologists. According to a recent survey, 95 percent of endocrinologists using Practice Fusion would recommend the EHR to a colleague. The free price tag was the most common reason for initially adopting the EHR (89 percent of respondents), followed by web-based accessibility of medical records (65 percent) and rapid set up (62 percent). Practice Fusion is also currently No. 7 on the CMS Meaningful Use incentive leaderboard for endocrinologists.

Since no two practices share the same workflow, Practice Fusion’s customizability and specialty-specific templates make it a natural fit for specialty physicians. The endocrinology templates, automatically included in new accounts, add to the free, robust functionality endocrinologists already rely on, including e-prescribing to over 70,000 pharmacies and rapid lab integration.

Las Cruces Orthopaedic Institute in New Mexico selected ChartLogic EHR Suite for its practice and surgery center.

The practice includes five orthopedic surgeons, a pain management physician and two physician’s assistants. The physicians are subspecialists in sports medicine, arthroscopy, spine care, joint replacement, pediatrics, deformities, trauma and physician rehabilitation.

“At Las Cruces Orthopaedic Associates, we pride ourselves on providing patients a nice office experience, as well as quality medical care. We are transitioning to an EHR to decrease wait times and create a secure, efficient system for our patients. ChartLogic meets all of those needs,” said Delilah Prieto, administrator of Las Cruces Orthopaedic Associates.

Yesterday we asked “What is the future of the Medical Transcription industry in this county?”    Today we’ll begin to speculate on the answer.  First – some background – the Medical Transcription business is one of the most fragmented industries in the county with nearly 70% of the business being done by about 60,000 small businesses.    But the traditional work available for those companies is shrinking, as physicians begin using newer technologies to capture patient notes.

There is already a great deal of attrition in the Medical Transcription (MT) industry with numerous examples of smaller MT firms being acquired by larger firms.  A few weeks ago, Nuance Communications acquired one of the larger MT firms, US Based Transcend Services, in a cash deal valued at over $300 million dollars.

Carina Edwards

I spoke with Carina Edwards, the Vice President of Solutions Marketing for Nuance Healthcare about the acquisition and how Nuance Healthcare sees the market evolving.

According to Carina, Nuance views the Transcend acquisition as an opportunity to accelerate access to and expand its customer base within the small to mid-size hospital market, a market that comprises nearly 90% of hospitals in the United States.

Those hospitals are in the 100 to 250-bed range and Nuance believes the combined companies will be able to offer these hospitals a more effective path to the achievement of meaningful use as well as the transition to ICD-10.

Carina said that Transcend customers will “continue to receive the great customer care experience they’re used to from Transcend and they’ll soon be able to take advantage of other Nuance Healthcare services like Quality Analytics and MD Assist.”

While many know Nuance only for their ubiquitous Dragon Dictation Software, many, myself included, may not have know that they already have a significant medical transcription business which is a part of their overall mission to allow physicians to capture clinical data any time and on any device.

Nuance is taking a broad view of clinical data capture and providing platforms to meet physician needs.  According to Carina they want make it easier for healthcare providers to “understand what has happened, codify what has happened and make it easier to use.”  This view of clinical data extends well beyond the initial capture of data.

So what can the Nuance Healthcare acquisition of Transcend tell us about the future of the Medical Transcription industry beyond the idea that larger companies are acquiring smaller companies?    One thing is becoming abundantly clear.  The business of merely transcribing dictation from a physician will not be enough to stay in business beyond the next few years.    If you’re a smaller MT company working closely with a group of physicians you’re a trusted partner to them and they can use your help with the numerous changes facing their practices.

Ask yourself how you can expand your knowledge base to help these physicians.  Are you learning about the new standards for meaningful use in your spare time?  Are you experimenting with Electronic Health Record systems?  Can you help your clients by typing notes directly into their new EHR system?  If they’re going to be using some form of speech recognition software to cut dictation costs can you help by editing the software-generated documents, clearing up the inevitable errors, and creating an accurate final document?

There is a future for the Medical Transcription business, but it will be changing much more rapidly than it has in the past.    Businesses that are willing to adapt and add services should thrive as those rooted in the past continue to disappear.

“By adding the ambulatory domain to our previous hospital certifications, our clients are now able to utilize our EHR module in both clinical and hospital environments,” said David Borden, CTO for MRO. “As the only release-of-information (ROI) company currently certified for Electronic Copy of Health Information and able to deliver patient electronic requests on behalf of hospitals and clinics, we see this as a true win for our clients when evaluating best approaches to meeting the critical meaningful use requirements.”

The ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification program tests and certifies that Complete EHRs meet all of the 2011/2012 criteria and EHR Modules meet one or more — but not all — of the criteria approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) for either eligible provider or hospital technology.

“CCHIT is pleased to be testing and certifying products so that companies are now able to offer these products to providers who wish to purchase and implement certified EHR technology and achieve meaningful use in time for the 2011-2012 incentives,” said Karen M. Bell, M.D., M.S.S., Chair, CCHIT.

ROI Online 2.1.1′s certification number is CC-1112-505110-3. ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification conferred by CCHIT does not represent an endorsement of the certified EHR technology by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nor does it guarantee the receipt of incentive payment.

ROI Online 2.1.1 meets the following certification criteria: Accounting of Disclosures, Electronic Copy of Health Information, Electronic Copy of Discharge Instructions, Timely Access, Access Control, Automatic Log-Off, Audit Log, Integrity, Authentication, General Encryption and Encryption when Exchanging Clinical Information.

The additional software ROI Online 2.1.1 relied upon to demonstrate compliance includes: ABCpdf, HL7Connect, SharpZipLib and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Patient TrackMate is a complete electronic health record (EHR) that was designed to be Offline and offer an iPad  user interface. As a result, the product is highly differentiated, easy-to-use and affordable. Patient TrackMate is very good for solo practice and every one related to medical system. www.patienttrackmate.com

It is also a patient tracker app and manages the prescription payment docs. It is a pure EMR Application which holds your complete patient data and other data. This  App  can also be configured to meet a provider’s personal charting preferences and custom forms can be implemented to work with Patient TrackMate iPad technology.

Ampere launched this first iPad Patient TrackMate EHR app for every physicians, doctors, nurses, solo practices and healthcare professionals on Apple app store. Ampere Software is an expert in EMR software, including tailoring its use for medical doctors and staff. We are  great researcher able to stay up-to-date on EMR compliance issues.

The cost of the App is $9.95 and it’s available in the iTunes App Store.

“Physicians in Puerto Rico are clamoring for SOAPware 2012, and we appreciate their patience as we worked with Inmediata to develop this exciting new interface,” states Randall Oates, M.D., President & CEO of SOAPware. “Adding the Inmediata interface to the SOAPwareXchange system means physicians in Puerto Rico can adopt SOAPware 2012 immediately and take full advantage of our software’s outstanding Meaningful Use functionality.”

“Inmediata is honored in supporting SOAPware and MedicalAIS through the most complete and robust EDI connectivity platform in Puerto Rico, which includes the exchange of claims, eligibility, ERA and eLab order/results information, among others,” said Guillermo Molina, General Manager of Inmediata Health Group. “We look forward to supporting SOAPware and MedicalAIS users with the best of our abilities.”

To meet the strong demand in Puerto Rico for its EHR and services, SOAPware is introducing MedicalAIS (MAIS) to provide on-the-ground attention to SOAPware customers in Puerto Rico along with current Platinum Partner Digital Solutions. MAIS, headquartered in Tampa, Florida, is a member of SOAPware’s elite Platinum Partner reseller group. Platinum Partners provide a full range of SOAPware product sales and support services, including implementation, training and technical support.

Enrico Linscheer, President of MAIS, said, “We are extremely grateful to SOAPware for the trust placed in our company to service the SOAPware user community in Puerto Rico. MAIS is opening a new branch office in Puerto Rico immediately, and we look forward to moving quickly into the marketplace to meet the EHR needs of the medical community.”

Recent national figures from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) indicate more than 129,000 priority primary care providers (PPCPs) have enrolled in REC programs similar to IL-HITREC’s. Late last fall, IL-HITREC reached its target goal of enrolling 1,300 PPCPs to assist in reaching meaningful use of a certified electronic health record system.

IL-HITREC anticipates that 381 of providers in its service region will receive nearly $8.5 million in federal Medicaid first-year pay-out incentives during 2012. IL-HITREC anticipates an additional 150 of its providers will receive about $3.2 million in federal Medicaid incentive pay-outs in 2013. State-wide data that includes Chicago provided by the ONC indicated first-year Medicaid pay-outs to 478 eligible providers of $10.1 million through the end of February.

IL-HITREC is a collaboration of healthcare and educational organizations focused on providing education, outreach and technical assistance to PPCPs throughout Illinois, outside the City of Chicago.

Medicaid spending has a positive ripple effect on state and local economies, according to John L. Lewis Co-Director of IL-HITREC. He said the economic impact begins with the reimbursement of providers for services delivered and trickles down to other areas.

“As Medicaid money is channeled through the local economy, it supports employment, wages, consumer spending, business income, state tax revenue and overall economic output. Medicaid reimbursement to providers becomes, in part, the earnings of doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists and other staff, as well as local businesses throughout the medical industry,” said Lewis.

IL-HITREC was created as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Recovery Act was designed to create jobs and foster economic growth through a series of tax cuts. It benefits working families and businesses, increases federal entitlement programs (such as unemployment insurance), and invests in long-term growth through federal contracts, grants, and loans.

Portions of the Recovery Act relating to health information technology are known as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, or HITECH Act.

“In order to encourage health care providers to take advantage of advances in health information technology and support the Recovery Act’s goal of economic stimulus, the HITECH Act appropriated funds for a program of financial incentives to providers participating in Medicare and Medicaid who use certified EHR technology,” said Roger Holloway, Co-Director of IL-HITREC.

“Primary care providers, in partnership with RECs like IL-HITREC, have taken a major step in transforming health care into an integrated system that enhances the safety and quality of care for patients nationwide,” he added.

The ARRA stimulus package includes financial incentives for health care providers who achieve meaningful use with an EHR. Medicare incentives can provide up to $44,000 per provider over five years, and Medicaid incentives up to $63,750 per provider over six years.