OPTOMETRIC EMR NO NO'S

opticXpress publishes Optometric EMR software. We believe that it should be easy to use and affordable and that it should ADD to the patient-doctor interaction...not DETRACT from it.

I came across the following article and thought I would share it with you all since it highlights 5 key points that we believe about our EMR software here at opticXpress.

"1. Should not make you design it

Many EMRs on the market today ask that physicians design their own templates. This is not only time consuming, indeed would require many days of not seeing patients just to enter the data, but can force an ophthalmologist to try to fit a very complicated patient into a pre-set template that does not address his or her issues properly. Thus, the physician is left editing the template at nearly every visit, another time-consuming task. The solution is to do away altogether with the idea of templating medical notes. The EMR that we are currently working with comes out-of-the-box with the knowledge of a 2,000-page ophthalmology textbook. It easily harnesses that information to present you with only the options that you need for any given diagnosis and then remembers your preferred settings. Each time you use the EMR, it automatically updates the way you dose your medications and do your procedures. There is no need for you to make any additional effort to tell the program what you do each time. Once it is done once, the system learns, but allows you to choose unique items for what are doubtlessly your unique patients.

2. Should not make it difficult to render drawings

An EMR that uses a mouse to render drawings on cornea and fundus diagrams is not only time consuming, but sometimes impossible. We are not graphic artists, we are ophthalmologists, but our diagrams are just as important. An EMR for ophthalmologists needs to allow us to quickly translate what we are seeing on our exam onto the screen and touch-based technology is a perfect vehicle for this. A few swipes of your finger should signify where the retinal tear or cataract is, how big it is, and any other features you choose to note.

3. Should not take away from the doctor-patient encounter

As Dr. Pauline Chen confessed last year in the New York Times, after implementing an EMR, “In order to use the computer, I had to turn my back to the patient as I spoke to him. I tried to compensate by sitting on a rolling stool but soon found myself spending more time spinning and wheeling back and forth between patient and computer than I did sitting still and listening. And when my patient did talk, his story came only in spurts because every time I turned my back to him to type, the room fell silent.”2 This is, of course, unacceptable, but all too common. We have found that it is absolutely imperative that the EMR not take away from our encounter with our patient. The EMR with which we are working allows the physician to rest an iPad on his or her lap and easily touch a button here or there to record an exam and history, all while maintaining eye contact with the patient.

4. Should not ask you to make further capital equipment purchases

The capital equipment costs for an ophthalmology practice are high and we should not be asked to purchase an expensive server to utilize an EMR. The advent of so-called cloud computing has made the need for an office-based server a thing of the past and quite an unnecessary purchase. Cloud based systems are far and away better suited to managing patient records. They are available anytime, anywhere, on any device. If an EMR company is providing the remote servers, they can support massive economies of scale in redundancies and backup, providing the service without interruption in almost every scenario. If the server in your office has a hard-drive fail, or the power supply dies, or someone spills coffee on it, everything must stop until it is fixed. Having an EMR that utilizes cloud computing allows you to at least have one less piece of equipment that you are responsible for.

5. Should not cost you time

As physicians, time is our most valuable resource. More minutes or even hours spent with your EMR, mean less time for your patients or your family. Your EMR simply cannot cost you any time and ideally should be a time-saver. According to a New England Journal of Medicine article, as of 2008, only 4% of physician practices in the United States were using fully functional EMRs.3 The reason for this often comes back to the amount of additional time many EMRs ask physicians to devote to documentation-- time we just don’t have. The motto of the company we are working with is “What’s Your Time Worth?” Time considerations need to drive everything an EMR company does.

For years, many EMR companies have been concerned with the needs of pharmacists and administrators, neglecting the needs of physicians and expecting them to adapt their practice to the EMR. But physicians have been voting with their feet and rejecting the vast majority of the products on the market. Recently, the tide has turned and ophthalmologists are demanding the things we need our electronic records to do. Let us not forget the things that they also must not do."

Now our software is not perfect but we are working hard every day to make it as close as possible. Hopefully we too will meet all 5 of these requirements for you and then some.