Second EPD implementation in one year is a big winner for Eye Care Center
The Eye Care Center of Northern Colorado had to implement a new EHR because the previous EHR implementation a year earlier left staff and physicians disappointed. The old EHR and practice management system from a well-known supplier seemed promising at the time, but quickly proved to be ineffective.
THE PROBLEM
“The group found that the software did not have the features we expected, and the main pain point came from billing,” says Megan Hamilton, clinical director of the Eye Care Center of Northern Colorado. “Issues included payments not being posted, or patients receiving the same bill three or four times.
“We also saw that insurance adjustments did not apply to a patient’s bill, and the patient received a bill for the wrong amount,” she continued. “I personally bought glasses at our office and received multiple bills and phone calls to collect money I didn’t owe, so I saw firsthand the frustrating system our patients were dealing with and knew we had to make a change.”
Other functionality issues caused inefficiencies in practice. For example, the Eye Care Center of Northern Colorado has 14 providers across four locations. The old software The practice management system made it difficult for staff to sort providers by location.
Furthermore, it took twelve clicks – a very high number – to add one insurance card to a patient’s billing profile. If the patient had two insurance cards, the time for one patient admission was several minutes, leading to longer wait times.
“These inefficiencies also extended to patient charting,” Hamilton noted. “If one patient in our practice saw two different specialists – for example, a retina appointment followed by a glaucoma appointment – the glaucoma specialist could not easily retrieve the notes from the retina visit, and vice versa.
“After compiling each of these issues, our team created a 15-page report detailing each of them,” she added. “We implemented the original EHR in June 2022 and made the decision to transition in January 2023.”
PROPOSAL
While Hamilton acknowledged it was difficult to ask doctors and staff to undertake a second one Implementing EHR and practice management within a year, the team knew the practice needed change. They chose EPD supplier ModMed.
“We felt confident in the plan ModMed offered because it covered all of our pain points and provided familiarity as some of our physicians had worked with the systems before,” Hamilton explained. “The plan laid out exactly how it would address our most critical problem: billing. We didn’t need to add any new bells and whistles when it came to the billing process, we just needed reliability.
“The vendor’s revenue cycle management system promised to deliver the fundamental reliability we were missing, working efficiently with our insurance partners to send our patients accurate billing statements,” she continued.
The new system also provided practical support from the trainers and a dedicated project manager. Employees and physicians participated in weekly virtual training sessions, followed by a week of on-site training.
“We also had a variety of virtual sessions for specific staff groups, such as MAs and physicians, allowing for additional dedicated training time for staff groups with more complex tasks,” Hamilton noted. “The vendor’s resources gave our staff the flexibility to complete the training on their own time and made the process relatively painless.
“This level of support also played a big role in our decision to implement a second EHR change within a year, as we knew our team would appreciate a strong training mechanism,” she added.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
Every staff member knows what their job entails and what tasks are associated with their respective roles. They just need a ship to perform those tasks, Hamilton said. The new systems have design elements that make every staff member feel like the developers built the software with their unique needs in mind, she added.
“For example, the revenue cycle features seem designed by someone with billing experience themselves,” she said. “This is a significant upgrade from our previous experience.
“EHR functionality should never limit our practice’s ability to treat patients and it is now much easier to complete tasks when the system is working as intended,” she continued. “Although we had to rework many of our workflows to adapt to the new system, it was much less painful than trying to make a broken system functional. We, in practice, get whiplash trying to put band-aids on our clothes.” slices.” previous EPD to compensate for its shortcomings.”
ModMed integrates with a drug management platform called PODIS, which helps align the eye center’s large retinal injectable inventory. It also has an integrated patient engagement platform called Klara, which provides two-way communication with patients and a reminder system to keep patients on time for their appointments.
RESULTS
“We have seen measurable results across the board that have resulted in tangible benefits for our patients,” Hamilton reported. “For example, the 12 clicks that the old EPD needed to add a new insurance card have been reduced to one click. This efficiency has already generated feedback from patients commenting on how quick the intake process has become.
“Patient mapping has also undergone significant streamlining,” she continued. “Documentation for a repeat patient can take as little as 30 seconds in the new EHR, called EMA, a reduction of more than two minutes. When we extrapolate that efficiency for each patient, our providers save an hour for every 30 patients they see – an incredibly valuable amount of time.”
In addition, physicians now have access to notes from other specialists, allowing them to seamlessly retrieve data about patients from their visits to another specialist. In addition to saving doctors the time and effort of asking another specialist to manually share their notes, it has improved the patient experience by giving doctors the most relevant patient data at their fingertips at the time of each visit, Hamilton said.
“Inaccurate billing issues, the primary trigger for our new EHR query, have been fully resolved,” she noted. “ModMed’s revenue cycle system promised reliability and has delivered an extremely high level of accuracy and reliability. Our patients no longer receive duplicate billings and the system accurately applies insurance adjustments to each bill as necessary.”
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
“If a new EHR isn’t working well for your practice, have the decisiveness and conviction to change course and find something better,” Hamilton advised. “The additional time and effort required for a new implementation is fully justified when the existing system is driving down efficiency and impacting the quality of the patient experience.
“The value of training support cannot be overstated, especially when clinicians are asked to switch to a new software package shortly after changing from another software package,” she concluded. “Flattening the learning curve and making the onboarding process as smooth as possible will drive buy-in from the entire team and help them realize the benefits of the new system more quickly.”
Follow Bill’s HIT coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Siwicki
Email him: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.