What Makes an Ophthalmology-specific EHR Different from Other Systems?

If you’re running an ophthalmology practice, there’s a good chance you are, or will soon be, flooded with patients. Over the past two decades, the demand for ophthalmology has grown, while the number of ophthalmologists has shrunk from 6.20 per 100,000 individuals to 5.68. To keep up with demand, your practice needs to get more patients in and out of your office while still providing excellent patient care.  

Ophthalmology-specific EHR software — not a generic EHR system — can help you achieve that goal. Similar to how patients get better eye care when visiting a specialist, an ophthalmology-specific EHR caters to practices in your specialty, not the generic needs of all healthcare providers.  

Goodbye Generic Solution  

When practices are looking for a new EHR system, they often turn to their healthcare colleagues and the internet. This can lead to a generic recommendation from Google or the cardiologist down the road. These general systems might meet basic needs, but they lack the tailored functionality needed for ophthalmologists, causing workflow inefficiencies, security and regulatory problems, and a lack of practice insights.

Disparate EHR and Patient Management Systems

With a one-size-fits-all EHR, there are some serious data limitations to consider. Often, these systems are set up for any type of healthcare practice and might not be able to capture ophthalmology-specific data, such information from an eye exam. Most systems are also missing integrations, such as with your practice’s product inventory and the IRIS® registry​​, which makes it harder to share data between your EHR and practice management systems.  

With a general EHR, your team has to enter the data into both the EHR and practice management (PM) system. They also have to create custom fields for ophthalmology-specific data. And, if they have questions while setting up or using their EHR, it’s often hard to figure out who on the support team to contact.

With Nextech’s ophthalmology EHR, you get seamless integration between your EHR and PM system and features customized to your specialty. Plus, you are also assigned to an ophthalmology-specific support team that quickly responds to any and all questions you may have.  

Lack of Practice Insights

As mentioned, a general EHR system doesn’t understand the nuances of your practice. The teams developing this software can’t identify ophthalmology-specific pain points because they studied problems healthcare practices face more generally. In contrast, an ophthalmology EHR is designed after talking to multiple ophthalmology practices and truly understanding their needs. It's designed to solve your speciality’s problems, not yours and the family physician’s next door.  

Specialization can also impact the insights you can gain from your practice’s data. A general EHR leaves opportunities for data redundancies, manual oversight, and data leakage. With Nextech’s ophthalmology EHR, you get the right data for your ophthalmology practice in the right systems, without as much hands-on intervention from your team. Just enter the data once and let Nextech automate the rest!

Complex Technology that Causes Inefficiencies

For most ophthalmology practices, a general EHR wastes time, creates disruptions whenever it updates or the system crashes, and frustrates patients. Over time, these inefficiencies prevent practices from scaling their ophthalmology practice and serving more patients. To stop stalling and start scaling, Pima Eye Institute switched to Nextech; after, they experienced increased revenue, space for more patients, and an improved workflow.  

More technology doesn’t always equal a better workflow. The right technology which is optimized to your practice’s specific needs — does. Time and time again, practices like Pima Eye Institute experience increased patient load capability, revenue, and efficiencies after they make the switch to an EHR purpose-built for ophthalmology.

Regulatory and Security Requirements

It’s no secret that there are strict regulatory and security requirements for ophthalmology practices. Your patients deserve to have their data protected and only used in compliance with federal regulations — and you deserve to take on less liability.

With a general EHR, you are liable to security threats and disruptions whenever the software updates. This means your team has the increased likelihood of a security and/or regulatory breach looming over their shoulders. And if that breach does happen, there’s likely more stress, bills from attorneys, and longer hours in the office.

But you can swap the stress for peace of mind. To achieve this, you need a system that decreases your liability and has systems in place to protect your patients’ data. Nextech’s ophthalmology EHR, for example, is HIPAA-compliant and uses a cloud-based system for added security.

Hello, Effective Solution: an Ophthalmology EHR

An ophthalmology-specific EHR streamlines workflows instead of forcing workarounds. To create Nextech’s solution, we researched the needs of ophthalmology practices and developed ways to improve your workflow, security, and patient experience.  

When compared to other systems on the market, our ophthalmology EHR provides a variety of benefits including:

• Charting Innovation: Nextech’s charting feature consolidates and clarifies charts into a single source. It’s also optimized for ophthalmology data, meaning you don’t have to create custom fields or find workarounds when entering patient information.
• Unmatched Support and Service: While our technology is known for being cutting-edge, Nextech support staff are praised for providing a human touch. Many of our clients rave about our support staff’s responsiveness, care, and knowledge of ophthalmology-specific EHR needs.
• Improved Patient Experience: A big part of your work, and ours by extension, is to improve the patient experience. Our EHR features robust patient engagement options to acquire, retain, and engage patients.  

For an example of these benefits in action, check out how Eye Care Center of Napa Valley uses Nextech: 

To meet increased ophthalmology demand, practices need to take on more patients without sacrificing care standards. An ophthalmology-specific EHR that integrates with other software provides the needed efficiency and innovation to accomplish that feat. Nextech’s single, specialty-specific solution is fundamentally different from the one-size-fits-all EHRs on the market. Learn how Nextech’s ophthalmology EHR can help your practice simplify the delivery of excellent patient care.