Solo and small practice electronic medical records

Clinical processing for effeciency

The backbone of the American healthcare system is the solo and small office practice. It is also the most under appreciated by software developers, government regulators and regional health information organizations. The results are not surprising, very few of these front line providers have purchased clinical office software that meets their special needs.

For most solo providers or their office managers, even the thought of having to choose electronic medical record, EMR, software is a harrowing thought. This is a big decision, one that affects a lot of people – patients, staff and the providers themselves. Choosing the right software can benefit patient care and profitability for years to come. Making the correct choice is critical to professional satisfaction and income for the quality of life sought.

Most providers have little business training so “fall back” on what is known and understood already, the practice management and billing side of the practice. While important in the choice of a total system for a provider’s business, practice management can only add marginal efficiency and income to a small practice.

Increasing the efficiency of practice management is one of diminishing returns. Income is not generated from practice management but only “managed.” Increasing the generally finite management income by a percentage might initially not be too difficult but each subsequent increase in efficiency is more difficult as it is on an already optimized system. Each attempt at efficiency increase becomes more expense to achieve until the return on investment is negative. Increasing the efficiency of the clinical function has no such limitation.

The clinical services provided in the small medical office are the “money makers.” Increasing the efficiency of the medical providers is one of increasing returns. The income is not finite and actually has an almost unlimited up-side. Each increase in efficiency makes it possible to become even more efficient, especially as economies of scale start to take hold. The focus on any EMR software purchase needs to be on the clinical documentation not the practice management.

The task is finding software that will make the practice’s income increase by making the “money makers” more efficient over currently clinically used paper. Many lose sight of this goal and start down the mistaken road of trying to keep a current practice management system as a key requirement of a new system. As practice management is an integrated “after the fact” function of a clinician’s work using two different vendors for these different tasks is less than efficient. Owing to the finite nature of the practice management to the overall efficiency it is not reasonable to keep a practice system unless the clinical EMR of the same vendor is satisfactory. This is a common small practice EMR software purchase error but not the only one.

The second item that must be considered is the purpose of the EMR software purchase. In most cases it is to improve documentation efficiently and quality of patient care over the currently used system, paper. Paper has been a fine documentation tool for centuries. In the purchase discussion the use of paper as the base system often quickly gets lost in a “features” discussion. Clinicians are very bright people doing very complicated tasks. What providers do is reflected in a features list, but this list has little to do with whether EMR software will be either useable or efficient. EMR software should be a tool for a clinician not a replacement for a clinician. In fact, extensive features without a useability that is as least as good as paper may make the EMR un-useable or require so much training as to be as good as un-useable!

Usability is really the issue in price, free is really too expensive if a provider can only see half as many patients or the quality of the patient encounter suffers. Tens of thousands of dollars may be cheap if it gives years of efficiency and helps in improved medical care. More important than price is finding EMR software more efficient than the current system being used by the clinicians.

Medscribbler is this type of useable software and the most powerful and intuitive to use clinical software for solo and small partnership providers. Addressing the needs of America’s healthcare backbone has resulted in a new breed of software called clinical processors. Software that in the hands of busy self-employed providers is the tool that allows the creation of electronic medical records. Medscribbler is the first of this new breed to make it possible for the small medical office to increase patient care quality and provider income.