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Our EMR for Urology
- Simply the BEST!
There is no need to purchase an EMR and spend your valuable time developing Urological templates.
We have already done this for you, and are years ahead of anyone else in the EMR industry.
Here are
a few of the Urological Templates meridianEMR has completed which are used for fast and complete documentation, proper coding
and better patient care by your colleagues:
Exams/Visits
- New Patient
- Established
Patient
- Established Patient Pre-Op
- Consultations
- Post Op
- Nursing Home Intake
- Nursing Home
Admissions
- Nursing Home Follow-up
- Nurse Visits
- Pediatric Urology
- Prostrate Screen, Post Op
Procedures
- BCG, Intron A, Mitomycin
- BareTip Laser
- Bladder Cocktail
- Brachytherapy
- Circumcision,
Pediatric
- Contigen Intraurethral, Periurethral
- Cryotheraphy Prostate
- Cysto Cautery
- Cysto Dilate
Stricture
- Cysto Dilate VNC
- Cysto Laser Fulgration
- Cystoscopy
- Durasphere Intraurethral, Periurethral
- E-Stim
- EMG
E-Stim Initial, Return
- Fulguration Condyloma
- Gold Marker
- Greenlight Laser
- IVP
- Indigo Bare
Tip
- Indigo Laser Prostatectomy
- KCL Sensitivity
- KUB
- Loop-O-Gram
- Nephrostogram
- Pelvic
Ultrasound
- Prostate Ultrasound
- Prostate Ultrasound and Biopsy
- Renal Ultrasound
- Scrotal Ultrasound
- TUMT
ACMI
- TUMT PROLIEVE
- TUMT THERMATRX
- TUMT Uologix
- TUNA
- TUR Bladder Biopsy
- TUR Bladder
Neck
- Trans Urethral Microwave Therapy
- Ureteroscopy Calculus
- Urethral Dilation
- Urethrogram
- Urine
Culture Sensitivity
- Urodynamics
- Uroflo
- VCU
- Vasectomy, No Scalpel
- Volume Study
Besides
the Best Evaluation and Management Coding System in the industry, meridianEMR's Urology System includes the
following highlights:
- Prostate cancer new diagnosis discussion is extensive. One mouse click
covers all indications for patient, including side effects of treatments, prognosis, and complications.
- All dates and
diagnoses of previous bladder, prostate, and renal biopsies are always on the chart. No longer do you need to look back to
see or wonder when the last biopsy was done and worry about what it showed. PIN, Atypia, Gleason grade - all remembered and
displayed.
- Viagra, Levitra, Cialis - our program displays on the patient's chart the complications, contraindications,
and instructions. It's something you always tell your patient, but we automatically document it for you in great detail.
- Urology
office procedures are automatic. We have templates for all office procedures, including IVP, Prostate Ultrasound with Biopsy,
TUMT, Indigo, Cytoscopy, Retrograde, Renal Ultrasound, Scrotal Ultrasound, etc.
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In Search of
the "Holy Grail" - An EMR That Really Works
By Dr. Neil Baum
Monthly contributing writer to the Urology Times
I
have had the opportunity to review and test dozens of electronic medical record systems over the years. All of them had some
of the features that would make it possible to go paperless, some of them features that made it easy to document each visit
with your patients, and some had the ability to allow your EMR to communicate with your practice management or billing program.
However, almost all of them had deficiencies that either burden the physician and slow him\her down and reduce the efficiency
of the practice, or were so sensitive that they frequently crashed and become inoperable, forcing the doctor to return to
the paper chart just like he\she did in the good ol' days.
Now an EMR program is available that has all of the bells
and whistles as well as the core functionality that allows you to practice medicine with enhanced efficiency. The system
also results in an increase in reimbursements by accurate coding that can survive the microscope of the most intense audit
from Medicare or any other payer. In this article I will review the best EMR I have ever seen for Urologists, meridianEMR™,
using XML generated clinical templates developed by one of our own colleagues, Dr. H.S. Jackson, a urologist in Murray, Kentucky.
A History Lesson
Dr. Jackson began his quest for the Holy Grail in 1998. Shortly after the Balanced Budget
Act in 1997 he read that doctors had to document the normal findings in their history and physical examination in order to
receive E & M credit for their codes. With a minimum of research he discovered that nearly 85% of all E & M records contain
normal values. With that fact and stimulus, he wrote a program to digitize and document normal values in both the history
and physical exam. This was the beginning of a 5-year journey that has taken him from “macros to money” in the doctors’ pocket.
Dr. Jackson, a urologist like you and me, is not an engineer, nor does he have a degree in computer science. However,
he does think like a physician and has learned computer programming by hard work and with lots of advice from computer experts.
He began working with Hamilton Scientific, a company started in 1998 by physicians and computer software experts in New Jersey.
The idea was to develop clinical templates that built in the thought process of practicing physicians while they were practicing
medicine. As a physician conducted their normal exams, they would simply tap on a touch screen or tablet, or point and click
a mouse, and their visit would be documented. The resulting note would be built on “synthetic dictation” automatically generated
from the template and choices made during the exam. As Dr. Jackson is an urologist, he put most of his efforts into building
urology templates for himself and his colleagues.
The Bottom Line
Normally I include the summary of my
article at the end. But I would like to get your attention by giving you the bottom line on meridianEMR from a pure “dollars
and sense” standpoint. As a result of implementing the EMR in his own practice, Dr. Jackson and other physicians have done
very well. As an example, a solo Urologist has put an extra $6600\month into his profit column by moving his coding curve
to the right, i.e., increasing the Level 4 and 5 E&M codes and decreasing the Level 1 & 2 codes. He has also decreased his
expenses by $2800\month by eliminating his transcriptionist. So what was the real net effect for this typical urologist?
He has increased his profit approximately $9400\month since he instituted the meridianEMR in his practice. That computes
to $112,800 annually without seeing one additional patient and without working one minute longer than he did BE....Before
EMR. Using the meridianEMR with urology- specific templates truly allows us to work smarter and not harder.
The
Unique Features of meridianEMR
The meridianEMR software is user friendly and uses the same intuitive process that urologists
use when they see patients. The program may be run on any Windows PC which is properly configured, and is normally used by
doctors with a tablet PC (Dr. Jackson uses a Motion Computing tablet) or a touch-screen notebook, (usually a Fujitsu). Both
systems use touch screen technology where the stylus functions as a mouse. As a result, little or no typing is required.
Most of the data can be inserted by using drop down menus and tapping through special Urology templates of the most common
urologic conditions such as hematuria, BPH, prostate cancer, UTI, incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
The tablets
or notebooks usually weigh less than 3 pounds and use wireless technology so the doctor is not tethered to the computer or
is required to lug a heavy laptop from room to room. The tablets are also capable of handwriting recognition and Dr. Jackson
says it can read his "chicken scratch" with 98% accuracy. The computer also has voice recognition software that can capture
your dictation with 85% accuracy.
Probably one of the most unique features of the program is its ability to compute
the E&M of your patient encounter. Your days of under coding and your days of increased reimbursement have arrived! And
best of all, you can go to sleep knowing that you can survive any audit because you have legally documented what you have
done for your patients. As a matter of fact, Dr. Jackson told me of an urologist who had successfully survived a Medicare
audit and the auditor commented that the charts were the best electronic medical records she had ever seen.
A new
version of the program has just been released which contains a pharmacy FAX module that will FAX your prescriptions to the
patient's pharmacy, a drug interaction and allergy alert reminder system, and a Health Maintenance module that allows the
system to track your patients each day and alerts you of any need to recall them (it runs in the background of the computer
without your staff having to do anything).
Dr. Jackson and meridianEMR are also working on a computer interface with
Meditech, (which is used by hundreds of hospitals according to Dr. Jackson) so it can electronically retrieve the hospital's
lab, x-ray and pathology department information and automatically include it in a patient’s electronic chart. Interfaces
with Laboratory systems are also available. As a result there is no need to scan records and reports from the hospital into
your EMR. The system does include an “Image and Fax Navigator” which allows documents to be scanned into your system and
be properly sent to the correct chart or physician for review by a staff member. Faxes are also handled in a similar manner.
meridianEMR
will easily interface with your practice management software if the software has an HL7 interface. This allows for patient
demographic data, appointments scheduled, and charges generated by the EMR to be integrated so that this data from the practice
management system will populate the EMR thereby reducing the need for duplicate entry into the two systems.
One of
the outstanding technologies this system includes is their “blended model” – where a small but powerful LINUX server
is installed in your office, which the physicians and staff work. This provides a very fast and reliable system and “peace
of mind” for you and your colleagues. At the same time data is being stored on your server, the system sends the exact data
to the company’s web server as a backup and place for you to get patient information any time, anyplace, via an Internet connection
in a HIPAA complaint manner.
This is truly the “best of both worlds.” In probably all other systems, if their server
goes down, you are paralyzed. If they are using an ASP model where your records and software operate only through the Internet,
and the Internet is down, you are non functional. In meridianEMR’s model, if your server goes down, you automatically connect
and work off the Internet. After the server is repaired, the system automatically “synchs up” any new data entered via the
Internet onto your server so both systems have exact duplicate data again. The company also saves your staff time (and you
money) by providing backup CDs of your data at your requested intervals.
The system includes a Toll-Free Customer Support
“Hot Line”, monthly software and template updates, and remote data hosting and backup of your data. The software and template
updates are sent from the Internet onto your network and tablet PC in the evenings, thereby reducing staff time in this area.
As
you can tell, I was extremely impressed with this product, and believe any urologist seriously considering an EMR for
their office should include meridianEMR in their search.
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