Medical House Calls Revived with the Help of iPad and EMR

Nurse Practitioner Scharmaine Lawson-Baker in New Orleans uses Practice Fusion’s free, web-based EHR technology on her iPad to make house calls; defends patient records from natural disasters.

San Francisco, CA – August 2, 2011 - Scharmaine Lawson-Baker, a certified family nurse practitioner in New Orleans, relies on Practice Fusion’s free, web-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) system on her iPad to deliver care to patients in their homes. Lawson-Baker makes about 10 house calls every day, to senior and disabled patients who would otherwise go without critical healthcare. Lawson-Baker is profiled in Practice Fusion’s latest EHR case study video:



“I love making house calls because it really puts you on the frontlines of primary care,” said Lawson-Baker in the new film. “Technology not only makes my job easier, but makes me more efficient and I’m able to provide patients with information in real time. They love it.”

Practice Fusion Passes 100,000 EMR Users

Practice Fusion Passes 100,000 EMR Users, Adding Over 500 New Medical Professionals Every Day

Fastest growing Electronic Medical Record community celebrates major user milestone by announcing plans for the Practice Fusion Connect conference on 11/11/11

SAN FRANCISCO – July 12, 2011 – Practice Fusion, the free Electronic Medical Records (EMR) company, announced today that it now has over 100,000 medical professional users serving 16 million patients. The company started the year with 55,000 users (82% increase) and 6 million patients (166% increase). More than 10,000 medical professionals sign up for the free, web-based EMR each month.

Practice Fusion’s Electronic Health Record System Achieves Complete ONC-ATCB Meaningful Use Certification

The largest EHR community in the US is now ONC-certified. Practice Fusion’s national network of small medical practices has the potential to earn over $1 billion in incentives.

San Francisco, CA – June 7, 2011 - Practice Fusion, the fastest growing Electronic Health Record (EHR) community in the country, has been awarded ambulatory certification (ONC-ATCB 2011/2012) as a Complete EHR by Drummond Group, an Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ATCB). Practice Fusion has also launched new Meaningful Use resources to help doctors in small medical practices prepare for EHR incentives.

"The time is now," said Ryan Howard, CEO and Founder of Practice Fusion. "If you're a doctor and want to collect your stimulus cash, only Practice Fusion gives you a free EHR that you can start using today. The legacy vendors continue to promote a failure model by selling antiquated technology that costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes months to implement. Practice Fusion is the choice of nearly 100,000 healthcare professionals and we’re giving you the easiest path to incentives."

Key Facts:

• Practice Fusion completed ONC-ATCB certification on June 2, 2011 with Drummond Group
• The company’s EHR is used by over 90,000 healthcare professionals and adds over 350 new users online each day
• Practice Fusion’s community of eligible providers stands to qualify for over $1 billion in incentives for meaningful EHR use
• Legacy EHR vendors have faced significant challenges in getting users to adopt certified versions including prohibitive upgrade costs and the need to visit thousands of individual sites to install software
• Practice Fusion will provide free training and support to all users for the EHR incentive process
• Doctors interested in using Practice Fusion’s free EHR to qualify for 2011 incentives are invited to sign up today at www.practicefusion.com

Practice Fusion has passed 80,000 medical professional users and 10 million patients

This came out the other day and it's quite impressive news!

Practice Fusion Passes 10 Million Patient Milestone

Free, web-based Electronic Health Record system now the single largest EHR community; with 80,000 medical professional users serving over 10 million patients nationwide

San Francisco, CA – April 26, 2010 – Practice Fusion, the fastest growing EHR community in the US, announced that it now serves more than 10 million patients and 80,000 medical professionals through its web-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform. Focused on delivering free technology to small medical practices, the company is adding 350 new users each day and supports over a quarter million patient visits a week. The announcement follows news of the $23 million Series B round of financing led by Founders Fund earlier this month.

Meaningful Use Webinar: Clinical Quality Measures

Dr. Robert Rowley, Practice Fusion's CMO, will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, April 28 at 4 PM PST(7 PM EST) that will review key information about EHR Meaningful Use with an emphasis on Clinical Quality Measures (CQM).

Participants will receive in-depth information on each clinical quality measure and exceptions to each measure.

We would like to invite the user community to participate in the event and you are encouraged to invite a friend or colleague!

We would like to ask users to submit their general questions prior to the start of the webinar. Please submit all questions to community@practicefusion.com.

More information about this webinar can be found here.

Infographic: Practice Fusion's Free EHR Community

Infographic: Practice Fusion’s Free EHR Community by the Numbers

The fastest growing Electronic Health Record community releases an infographic to celebrate nearly 400% growth over past 12 months and closing of the Series B investment.

SAN FRANCISCO – April 12, 2011 –Practice Fusion, the fastest growing EHR and healthcare community, today released an infographic visualizing the company's growth and unique profile in the medical sector. The infographic follows last week's milestone announcement of the company’s Series B financing round led by Founders Fund.

Since the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system launched in 2007, Practice Fusion has seen triple-digit annual growth. Today, the free, web-based EHR has 75,000 healthcare professional users serving over 9.6 million patients and brings on 350 new users every day. The company is focused on delivering free technology to doctors, nurses and staff in small medical practices across the country.

Practice Fusion ONC and Meaningful Use Webinar

Dr. Robert Rowley, Practice Fusion's CMO, will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, March 24 at 4 PM PST, 7 PM EST that will review key information about the EHR Meaningful Use criteria. Participants will recieve in-depth information on:

* Meaningful Use core criteria
* Meaningful Use menu criteria
* Relevant exclusions for each criteria

More information here.

Practice Fusion is more than just a free EMR. They also do research

Author: Thuc Huynh, MD

We all know that Practice Fusion is a free EMR.  But did you know they also do general health research?  I didn't.

Not until I recently read on their company blog that they've found a link between a person's Body Mass Index (BMI) and Farmer's Markets!

According to their Research Division, the availability of a Farmer's Market was correlated with lower BMI.    They go on to say that eating fresh fruit is also associated with a lower BMI.  Is it because of the availability of healthier foods?  What other factors may be contributing?  

Nonetheless, the information is interesting and the infographic is very telling of our nation's health as a whole.

For a visual interpretation about Practice Fusion's research data on BMI & Farmer's Markets, make sure to visit their company blog.

It was great to visit Practice Fusion in San Francisco!

It was great to visit Practice Fusion last week when I was visiting San Francisco for a conference.

People at the Practice Fusion office were enthusiastic and full of energy. They're getting ready for HIMSS11 and I want to thank them again for agreeing to sponsor me at HIMSS this year. They're enrolling hundreds of new users each day and they have an active group of account managers working with new users.

If you're going to HIMSS, make sure to visit the Practice Fusion booth and look for me on Tuesday if you want to win a free TV (more details coming soon).

Practice Fusion Adds New Features! Receive Structured LabCorp Results

Practice Fusion has added a great new feature to their free EHR. Here's an e-mail I recently received:

We're starting the New Year with another exciting feature release. Our team is thrilled to announce that when you sign up for Practice Fusion's free EHR, you can now receive structured lab results from LabCorp, one of the largest labs in the US. New enhancements also include shortcut buttons allowing you to add appointments and patients from anywhere in the application and the EHR Assistant Bar that provides crucial support when you need it most.

LabCorp
LabCorp performs more than one million tests on approximately 400,000 samples each day. Now you can review, sign and manage all your patient's most critical LabCorp information straight from your Practice Fusion account in a new, dynamic way. Integration is fast and free. Sign up directly from the Labs section of your account.

* Access past results for all your LabCorp orders within the EHR
* Quickly identify color-coded out-of-range results
* Leave comments on lab results
* Diagnose patients directly from their lab results
* Set permission levels for viewing and signing labs

Practice Fusion Certified Consultant Network

Practice Fusion's network of Certified Consultants is ready to provide your practice with critical on-the-ground support when you decide to implement an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. Find a local certified professional to help get you up and running on our EHR with little or no disruption to your daily operations. Consultants specialize in Practice Fusion implementation and time-saving solutions. Here's some additional information about the Practice Fusion Certified Consultant Network:



Learn more about the Practice Fusion Certified Consultant Network here.

EMR Usability: Let the Market Decide

This is being republished from EHR Bloggers

As any left-handed person that has struggled to use a pair of scissors or a fountain pen will verify, the design of a tool impacts the quality of the work done with that tool. That’s true for electronic health records, as well. EMRs support complex cognitive processes, and the way they are designed directly impacts the speed and accuracy of a clinician’s work.

Even small design flaws in EMR systems can jeopardize patient safety. Suppose for example, that medication order-entry forms in an EMR were presented in an order that differed from the way a physician normally completes them on paper. The change would force her to alter a long-established thought process, which amounts to a recurring nuisance until someday, when she is hassled or tired, she forgets to make the adjustment. It’s an accident waiting to happen.

The National Research Council reached this conclusion in its recent report, Computational Technology for Effective Health Care. “The nationwide deployment of health IT will not be sufficient to achieve the vision of 21st century healthcare, and may even set back the cause,” the NRC claimed, unless vendors put a “greater emphasis on providing cognitive support for healthcare providers.”

In industries ranging from nuclear power to aviation, technology companies work continuously to improve the usability of their products. As McKesson’s Beth Meyer points out, “the cockpit of a jet airliner looks fundamentally different today than it did 10 years ago. [It] is easier to learn, more intuitive and – as a result – safer to use. Doing the same for health IT is critical.”

Case Study: Medical Office Software In Action (Practice Fusion)

Here's a great short video about Lynn McCallum, MD, a family practice physician in Redding, California. She became a Practice Fusion user in February 2009. I know quite a few physicians who are just like Dr. McCallum, but they are still using paper charts and paper prescriptions. Isn't it time to switch to an electronic health record (EHR)?

Dr. McCallum’s practice:

"We are a full service family practice office in Northern California, with one physician, one nurse practitioner, two back office personnel, a front desk receptionist and a biller. We see all ages of patients and do low risk obstetrics, pediatrics with immunizations, well women and well male exams, general family practice visits and in-office procedures including vasectomy, skin biopsies, circumcisions, lacerations, etc."



Learn more about Practice Fusion here.

Free e-Prescribing with Practice Fusion (free EHR)

You may have already heard this, but Practice Fusion (free EHR) now offers a free e-Prescribing solution. Have your DEA and NPI numbers ready.

Practice Fusion Launches Free e-Prescribing

e-Prescribing system integrated into free, web-based EHR. Available to all doctors. Helps avoid medication errors, qualifies for Medicare incentives, saves time and serves patients.

Practice Fusion's free e-prescribing system includes:

    * Connection to over 50,000 pharmacies
    * Continuously updated medication library
    * Same-day enrollment for most providers
    * Flexibility to use e-prescribing as a stand-alone feature or as part of the comprehensive free EHR system
    * Easy pharmacy look-up with filters for proximity to the practice or patient address
    * Refill requests delivered back to the practice directly from the pharmacy
    * Instant prescription details delivered to the patient Personal Health Record online
    * Unlimited free set-up assistance, migration help, training and support
    * Qualification for the Medicare e-prescribe bonus

You can read the full press release here.

Practice Fusion Hits 25,000 EHR User Milestone

Practice Fusion Hits 25,000 EHR User Milestone
Free, web-based electronic health record company celebrates 400% growth in 2009.

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Practice Fusion today announced that the company's user base has grown 400% in 2009 to surpass 25,000 medical professionals. Practice Fusion continues to be the fastest growing Electronic Health Record (EHR) community in the US, serving the needs of family practice and private practice physicians across the country.

Practice Fusion's free model gathered a great deal of attention in 2009, disrupting a sector where equivalent EHR systems cost $50,000+ a year. Highlights from 2009 include:

    * Starting 2009 with 5,000 registered users
    * Announcement of HITECH incentives under the ARRA stimulus plan
    * Overhauling the scheduling module
    * Launching an "Activity Feed" for visually tracking activity within a practice
    * Receiving strategic investment from salesforce.com
    * Integrating with Quest Diagnostics and BioReference Laboratories
    * Announcing the company's "Meaningful Use" certification guarantee
    * Launching Patient Fusion, a free Personal Health Record platform challenging Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault
    * Hitting the 25,000 user milestone

(read more...)

Searching for a Free EMR or EHR?

The keywords "free EMR" are still going into Google every day. EMR = electronic medical record. I prefer to use EHR = electronic health record. I get a fair amount of traffic to this site from people who type "free EMR" into Google and they land here because my site is on the first page of search results.

As this country moves forward with healthcare reform and hospitals, clinics, and offices implement electronic health records (EHRs), some are still looking for a free option. There are some free EHRs that are certified by CCHIT (Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology), so does it make sense to choose a free option? I've been thinking about this issue and here are some of my thoughts:

• If you're a solo physician and you're struggling to survive because of reduced and delayed reimbursement from managed care, then perhaps you should go with a free EHR. There's no point in investing over $40k in an EHR just to declare bankruptcy. (by the way, they're not all that expensive)
  
• If you're completing residency soon and you're about to embark on your own and start a brand new solo practice from scratch, then maybe you should go with a free EHR and then switch to a different system in several years once you've generated some revenue.
• If you're getting really close to retirement and you want to play around with EHRs just for fun, then maybe you should try a free EHR.
  
• If you're a solo physician using paper records and you're planning on retiring within the next 5 or so years, then it might make sense to invest in a free EHR. I say "might" because there are obviously multiple factors at stake and I am not making any recommendations here.

The honest truth is that I really don't know how free EHRs will evolve over the coming years. I don't think anyone really knows. Some free EHRs are really simply "lite" versions of the software and you won't qualify for "meaningful use" if you're using these versions. Other free EHRs are fully functional and robust, but it's hard to predict the long-term viability of some of these companies.

Open-Source EHR in a Utah Hospital

Healthcare IT News has a story about a Utah hospital that is deploying an open-source electronic health record (EHR). Blue Mountain Hospital is going to run OpenVista by Medsphere.

Open-source does not always equate to FREE. Many open-source applications are free, but this isn't necessarily true in the world of EHRs. Here's a brief snippet about Medsphere's OpenVista: "Medsphere OpenVista represents a single solution that can be leveraged across the continuum of acute, ambulatory, and long-term care environments as well as in multi-facility, multi-specialty healthcare organizations. The high degree of integration across the enterprise has significant advantages in increasing clinical performance, reducing costs, and improving healthcare outcomes. It also facilitates the collection of data for the extended care team and for non-clinical uses such as billing, quality management, outcomes reporting, and resource planning."

Top Search Terms for April 2009

Here were the top search terms that brought people to this site:

1. medicine and technology
2. dr joe kim
3. free emr
4. blackberry storm medical applications
5. rivaroxaban fda
6. cchit 2009
7. opera mini vs opera mobile
8. jobs for mds without residency
9. non clinical careers for doctors

Top 10 Keywords in the Last 30 Days

Here are the top 10 keywords that are bringing people to my website through search engines:

1. medicine and technology
2. joe kim
3. joseph kim
4. jobs for mds without residency
5. blackberry storm medical applications
6. free emr
7. cchit 2009
8. medicine and technology joe kim
9. opera mini vs opera mobile
10. rivaroxaban fda

I guess people are still looking for a free EMR solution.

What's the Best Electronic Health Record (EHR) for My Practice?

What is the best electronic health record (EHR) or electronic medical record (EMR) for your clinical practice? Can you confidently answer that question? Which vendor will you choose? Nextgen? GE Centricity? Allscripts? Epic? Cerner? eClinicalWorks? e-MDs? MedPlexus? McKesson? Hopefully you're only considering EHRs that are Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology or CCHIT certified. ASP of server-based?

Maybe you're even considering some free EMR options like Practice Fusion. How do you plan to make your decision? Do you feel like you could make an informed, educated decision about EHR selection? When you start adding billing and other practice management capabilites. Have you considered e-Prescribing? What if you're a cardiology or oncology practice? Do you know what type of subspecialty solutions are available? I feel like there are so many questions that need to be answered for hospitals and clinicians who are looking for an EHR solution.