A Broken Promise?
In a recent article published by Medical Economics, they interviewed healthcare providers (from various fields and specialties) about their opinions as to whether EMR/EHR systems have delivered on initial promises such as increased efficiency, better time management, and fast charting. Their responses were, to put it nicely, less than positive. The vast majority of healthcare professionals interviewed in the article expressed feelings of disappointment with the EMR/EHR industry as a whole, as well as what needs to happen in order for the EMR/EHR industry to regain the trust and support of physicians and other users in the medical field.
The article seems to propose that many in the healthcare industry have come to view EMR/EHR as a broken promise that continues to disappoint users, time and again.
At Nextech, we refuse to accept this “broken promise” portrayal of EMR vendors. We believe in finding answers, not making excuses. We believe in solutions.
It is our mission to create and develop efficient, user-friendly, and robust specialty-specific EMR solutions… and it is our customers who make it possible for us to keep carrying out this mission. We believe that the best way to develop tools and functions that meet the evolving needs of our Nextech user family is to ask them, to listen to them, and to take action based on their input. And that’s exactly what Nextech is doing, each and every day. We take opinions and input from our real-world users into consideration in all that we do, and by doing so we are able to offer the kind of user-friendly Healthcare Intelligent Technology that has made Nextech a leader in specialty-specific EMR and Practice Management solutions.
In-Visit Document Completion
In the Medical Economics article, one of the biggest complaints among EMR/EHR users was that they couldn’t do full charting and other documentation during patient visits. This means the charting has to be done later, usually at the end of a long workday when the last thing anyone wants to do is spend hours finishing the day’s paperwork. As one doctor in the article puts it, “with an EHR there’s no time to do your full charting when you’re in the room. […] So I’ll probably take two to three hours at home to get caught up on charting, and that certainly isn’t reimbursed.”
Nextech EMR, when used in conjunction with our iPad application, gives users the power to use their iPad tablets to complete all charting and documentation during patient visits, without sacrificing time or interrupting workflow. This means our users do not have to keep playing the “charting catchup” game at the end of the day. Our users’ time is important to us, and we know it is even more precious to them. This is why we strive to create tools that allow our users to make the most of their time—both in and out of the practice.
Your time away from the office should be just that—time away from the office. Wouldn’t we all be happier if we could spend that away time resting, recovering from the day, or enjoying an evening with our families? Of course we would.
And, with Nextech’s EMR and iPad app solutions, our users can do just that.
Dictate with NexSpeak
Many of the physicians interviewed in the article also expressed their dissatisfaction with the solely “point-and-click” nature of many EMR templates. According to Mark Anderson, FHIMSS, a Health IT consultant interviewed in the article, “On average […] it takes physicians nine times as long to enter data in a template-driven system as it would take them to dictate a note.” The problem with most dictation software, however, is that these verbal notes do not translate into the EMR/EHR’s actual data fields. Therefore, manual data entry will still need to be done afterwards.
Another problem addressed in the article has to do with the fact that most available forms of dictation software do not have the Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology required to achieve the kind of accuracy needed for medical situations. Physicians in the article expressed dissatisfaction with “speech recognition” types of software for medical dictation, and claimed that they felt it was too risky for them to use it confidently.
To answer this problem for our users, our team created NexSpeak, an NLP equipped, intuitively designed, talk-to-text dictation tool. Capable of translating words to text, this solution reduces clinical documentation times by providing users with the power to dictate directly into their iPad tablets. Transcription with NexSpeak is simple, fast, and accurate, helping our users save time, reduce transcription costs, increase efficiency, and enrich the experience of doctor-to-patient interaction.
Patient Data Self-Entry
Another section of this article points out the increasing desire among many EMR/EHR users to be able to have their patients do a certain amount of their own data entry. For example, some physicians still have to give their patients paper medical history forms to fill out. Then this data has to be manually entered into the EMR system later on. Among those interviewed in the article, there was a general consensus that it would be far easier if patients could simply enter this information themselves, via an online survey or patient portal that automatically inputs this data into the EMR.
Nextech has already created a solution that does exactly that.
Our current NexWeb Patient Portal gives physicians the tools they need to let patients enter their own medical history information, while moving it directly into the EMR without the need for additional data entry. This solution reduces the amount of time spent on unnecessary data entry and improves patient care, providing physicians a seamless and convenient way to simply view a patient’s self-entered medical information before an interview or visit.
The Nextech team is currently developing a new and improved patient portal that will offer our users, and their patients, even more tools and features to utilize. Keep an eye out for details on the new patient portal in the near future.
Our Promise Will Be Kept
At Nextech, we refuse to accept the narrative that EMR is a “broken promise.” We believe that for every task there is a tool, for every problem a solution, and we make it our daily mission to discover and create an EMR and Practice Management software that serves the needs of our users.
Rest assured that we will never stop evolving our technology, and will continue to develop the very best in Healthcare Intelligent Technology for medical professionals in ophthalmology, dermatology, and plastic surgery specialties.
This is our promise to the Nextech user family… and we intend to keep it.
