Is your practice using technology to its maximum potential? Setting goals for your system, moving away from retroactive report reviews and sharing data to sustain buy-in are some of the essential steps to start optimizing technology.

It is clear that value-based care is still health care organizations' top priority. Technology such as an EMR, Patient Portals and an Operation Management Solution, can ensure your practice is keeping up with current trends that remold the health care landscape.

A recent study revealed how much time ophthalmologists at a single center spend using their EHR. In this month's issue of Ophthalmology Business, Nextech's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Dan Montzka discussed why it is important to have a system that has been responsive to user input over time and is workflow friendly.

In this month's Electronic Health Reporter, Nextech's Jeff Lew, VP of Product Management, discusses "What's Ahead in Electronic Health Record Technology in 2018." As the electronic health records (EHRs) continue to evolve, there are exciting new developments that are emerging, read all about which three trends that Lew thinks are worth watching out for.

In this month's issue of Practical Dermatology, Nextech's very own Senior Professional Services Consultant, Robin Ntoh discussed the 5 tech trends that your dermatology practice can leverage today. From increasing referrals and retention through data analytics and reporting to preparing your practice to be MACRA ready, you can make sure your are on top of the latest technological innovations and trends.

According to the HIMSS Analytics 2017 Essentials Brief: Outpatient PM & EHR Study, 44.1% of respondents noted patient portals as the top technology for addressing the MIPS Clinical Practice Improvement Activities (CPIA) measure. The study notes that the expanded portal technology surpases health information exchange, which was indicated by survey respondents in 2016 as the technology needed to implement to address CPIAs.

It has always been important for Plastic Surgery practices to recognize the direct effect that patient experience has on retention and practice growth. Now more than ever, Plastic Surgery practices must increase operational efficiency to be more competitive. Many practices are looking to new technology options to help fill the gaps in operational efficiency.

In specialty practices such as ophthalmology, dermatology and plastic surgery, physicians spend the majority of their time using information from images and textual data from the electronic medical record (EMR) to make decisions. Integrating images into the EMR is therefore a great benefit to improving functionality for physicians. Read the full article from Becker’s Health IT and CIO Review to learn more about improving EMR efficiency by integrating imaging and other features such as a patient portal.