In our latest episode of the eCW Podcast, hear from our own Sharmeelee Tasto how clinical and technical teams collaborated in person and online in unscripted testing of eClinicalWorks V12 before its release to customers. The hackathon, as it’s referred to, was a recommendation from the Patient Safety Board to increase clinician involvement in the prerelease exercise of unscripted testing to identify software bugs, patient safety concerns, and usability issues. Tune in to hear how the exercise went.

Find out how healthcare professionals at Chisholm Trail Pediatrics, a nine-provider two-location pediatrics practice, are using healow Patient Engagement solutions like healow CHECK-IN, healow Pay, and customizable appointment reminders via text message to provide better care to patients and their families. 

Virginia’s Johnson Health Center wasn’t maximizing use eClinicalWorks, but EHR Implementation Services optimized their engagement with the browser version and improved customization and care delivery.

One of the lesser-known aspects of the eClinicalWorks EHR, Rules Engine Alerts contain enormous power to improve care by holding providers accountable for attending to care issues as they arise. Jose Rocha of Performance Medical Management explains how a practice can use alerts to help ensure that providers and staff deal with care issues on the spot, capturing all necessary claims data.

At Brookhaven Heart & MD365, Dr. Sateesh Joseph and staff use Remote Patient Monitoring to more closely monitor patients’ high blood pressure, enabling providers to reduce in-office visits, improve outcomes, and focus more of their efforts on those complex cardiac patients who need more attention.

eCW Podcast host Adam Siladi and Dr. Dhrumil Shah, a physician and Chief Medical Information Officer at Compass Medical, a 150-provider, multispecialty group in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, discuss how a team-based approach can help reduce the risks of provider burnout while helping today’s busy medical practices achieve the goals of value-based care.

Because two-thirds of their patients lack insurance and are self-pay, HealthWorks for Northern Virginia can’t rely upon insurance payer data to obtain the patient records they need. But as Jesse Burke explains, using healow Insights PRISMA enables HealthWorks to get the data they need at the point of care, because PRISMA gathers information from all available EHRs nationwide using queries based on a patient’s name and/or date of birth — effectively solving the interoperability puzzle for this busy Federally Qualified Health Center.

For the last two years, Prima CARE, a medical practice with more than a dozen locations in Southeastern Massachusetts, has been using healow Insights to improve patient care. A secure, bidirectional interface allows practices to exchange patient information from any available internal or external network or hospital in the area or across the nation with health insurance companies and Pharmacy benefit managers. Relevant clinical information is available more quickly and effectively that ever, and all in one place. Data are also available to satisfy audits by insurance companies, which no longer need to visit the practice, but can conduct those audits electronically.

Monica Salopek of Acadiana Health & Wellness in Lafayette, Louisiana, said that providers are the driving force behind successful implementation of Chronic Care Management (CCM) programs. Her practice launched the CCM program to focus on patients who need more one-on-one attention. They have succeeded with it thanks to the initiative and strong communication skills of providers, with follow-up communications by staff.

Abbreviating medications and procedures may be convenient, but physicians today are learning to break old habits and are avoiding abbreviations that can be misinterpreted and lead to patient harm.

New price transparency rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services required hospitals and hospital-owned organizations to post machine-readable files in plain language that will allow patients to generate estimates for what they will pay for a given medical service. By using the healow Price Transparency tool, medical organizations can comply with CMS rules and gain a competitive advantage by attracting business from consumers who want to know upfront what their out-of-pocket costs will be. For more information book a meeting here: https://meetings.hubspot.com/kshogren 

The latest eClinicalWorks Behavioral Health module offers Bridge Community Health Clinic, an FQHC in Wausau, Wisconsin, the tools they need to deliver quality care. Dr. Dakota Kaiser, Clinical Director of Behavioral Health, cites phased treatment plans, the Data, Assessment, and Plan tool, integrated timer, in-place editing, and new options to protect patient confidential as key features for his organization.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pioneer Physicians Network, a 70-provider organization in the Greater Akron, Ohio area decided to “right size” their practice. They used Revenue Cycle Management services from eClinicalWorks to shift burdensome work off their staff, allowing them to maximize the effectiveness of existing personnel and resources. Pioneer centralized their eligibility processes, made check-in more efficient, reduced days in A/R by up to 25%, has improved collections, and enabled providers to meet their quality benchmarks more consistently.

In this edition of the eClinicalWorks Podcast, Farah Saeed, a member of the Interoperability Team at eClinicalWorks discusses the importance of practices received ADT (admission, discharge, and transfer) notifications from hospitals for patients under their care. By enabling Direct messaging and using the eClinicalWorks Transition of Care Notifications dashboard, practices can keep up with the status of their patients moving among care settings, helping to ensure they are delivering the best possible care.