From the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, here is an important announcement on electronic health records.

As of Tue Jan 31, more than $3.2 billion in Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments have been made; more than 191,000 eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals are actively registered. Learn if you are eligible and, if so, what you need to do to earn an incentive. This session will inform individual practitioners about the basics of the Medicare & Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. Remember: This is the last year that eligible professionals can participate in Medicare and get the maximum incentive payment.

Target Audience: Eligible Professionals (EPs), which include Doctors of Medicine or Osteopathy, Doctors of Dental Surgery or Dental Medicine, Doctors of Podiatric Medicine, Doctors of Optometry, Chiropractors, Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives, and Physician Assistants (PA) who practice at an FQHC/RHC led by a PA. (Note that hospital-based EP’s may not participate; an EP is considered hospital-based if 90% or more of the EP’s services are performed in a hospital inpatient or emergency room setting.) Medicaid eligible professionals must meet patient-volume criteria, providing services to those attributable to Medicaid or, in some cases, needy individuals.)

Agenda:
Are you eligible?
How much are the incentives and how are they calculated?
How do you get started?
What are major milestones regarding participation and payment?
How do you report on meaningful use?
Where can you find helpful resources?
Question and Answer Session
Registration Information: In order to receive call-in information, you must register for the call at http://www.eventsvc.com/blhtechnologies. Registration will close at 12pm on the day of the call or when available space has been filled; no exceptions will be made, so please register early.

Presentation: The presentation for this call will be posted at least one day beforehand at http://www.CMS.gov/NPC/Calls. In addition, the presentation will be emailed to all registrants on the day of the call.

When we opened our Nurse Practitioner owned practice in 2006, we used an EMR from day one. We scanned in things like insurance cards and imported them directly into the EMR.

Unfortunately, we did not have the fax networked  so we could receive faxes directly into our system (my mistake, but we’ve recently corrected).

But beyond the faxes, we receive paper via couriers, patients and mail. We shred all the time, and indeed have burned through FOUR shredders since the beginning. But the paper continued to build up.

This week, we called a company (HIPAA compliant of course) to come in and get the paperwork that had already been scanned into the charts. They rolled in a huge paper-bin, we filled it up and then some, and the rolled it back out to their truck where we saw all that paper being eaten up.

If you’d like to avoid this or at least reduce the amount of paper in your office, try these tips.

• Use an EMR. There are plenty of them available for you to use from free and low cost to those that cost a ridiculous amount of money (IMHO).
• Next, make sure you have a good scanner. We’ve been using a Brother all-in-one that has served our purposes since 2006 without so much as a hiccup. I also hear frequent praises for the ScanSnap.
• If you don’t network your faxes to receive them electronically (that was so silly of me), use a service such as UpDox. We are using them now and I’m kicking myself for not doing it earlier.
• Invest in a really good shredder. Don’t go even moderately good…you’ll burn them out.
• Don’t be afraid to use a shredding service. While they all offer ongoing services for a monthly fee, they also offer one time or periodic services. That pile you see in the picture…cost $40.00 to shred.
• When requesting records from other offices, ask for them to be sent as PDF’s. No paper and you’ll be able to import them directly into your EMR.

Now that all that paper is out of the office, we fell like we can breathe again. That is until it builds up again.

Share your tips for reducing paper in your office below.

There are a multitude of Electronic Medical Records/Electronic Health Records software available on the market today. Some are free and others can cost literally tens of thousands of dollars. I cannot give comment on many of them, however, I can tell you about the one I use. (If you have a different one and want to write a post for us, sent it to us with your contact info and we’ll add it to a post of its own).

When I opened my office August 2006, I thought it would be a great time to open “paperless”. Let me start by saying…I am NOT paperless and I’m beginning to doubt that such a think is possible…but this is for another post.

Because I had used an EMR, I had an idea of what I wanted and what I didn’t. For me it came down to ease of use, could I get the information I was looking for, how easy was it to maintain (guess who provides the IT? Yep…me) and was it affordable. I was not interested in taking out a second mortgage for a charting package.

I ended up choosing Amazing Charts. First of all, you can download the entire program and run it for free for 3 months. You can play with it and see if it will work for you. While I did that, the true test really does not happen until you are using it “for real”. At the end of my three month trial, I did purchase the program along with support and upgrades. For one provider, I spent about $1500.

While does not do everything I would want, it certainly does a great deal. I also like the fact that the program is constantly being upgraded, there is an active support forum, and most of the time, I can access the “Guardian Angels” when I need some immediate help. What I don’t like is I live on the West Coast and they are on the East Coast.

 I’ll talk my set up in another post, in the meantime, let’s hear about your experiences with EMR and Amazing Charts.