Physical Therapy Archives | Page 6 of 6

Electronic Medical Records System Top Five Tips

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | May 26, 2012 | Physical Therapy

It’s not enough that your practice is switching to an electronic medical record system. The most important thing to remember when choosing a physical therapy software is that it will be able to meet your needs.

Price is not the only factor. Nitin Chhoda reviews the top five tips to choosing the right electronic medical records system for your practice.

Choosing an electronic medical records system for a physical therapy practice can be quite difficult.

There are hundreds of electronic medical records vendors, all vying for your attention. Often there is no clear advantage of one solution over another.

But the evaluation and comparison process is worth the time. Here are five tips to help you navigate the physical therapy electronic medical records (EMR) scene.

Choose Based on Price. For many firms, price is an important consideration. But sometimes the low price means bad design or fewer features. If an electronic medical record is able to successfully compete on price, then that product might just be good enough for your firm, but make sure you’re getting the features you need.

Focus on Design. Remember: you and your team are going to have to use this electronic medical records software every day. It should be intuitive and practical.That means no excessive clicks to get through note taking or record updates and an easy to understand interface.

The interface matters for physical therapy electronic medical records solutions, because if the program isn’t easy and fun to use, it will feel like more of a burden than a solution. A surprising number of electronic medical records vendors don’t focus on design and usability.

If nobody wants to use the electronic medical records (EMRs) software, it’s not worth buying. Oh, and watch out for the phrase “it’s only a click away!” Every click counts. Ideally it should already be on the page you are on.

Analytics are Important. You will be using your physical therapy documentation software to keep track of your patients. That also means that you need to be able to use it to get information back out.

Ideally you should be able to ask your physical therapy electronic medical records solution about your patient. What was prescribed, how many of a given type of injury have you dealt with, how a patient is progressing. Physical therapy documentation software is only as good as its ability to tell you that information.

Don’t Beta Test. You need software designed for electronic medical records of physical therapy. Don’t opt for a product that has seen enormous success in another medical field but hasn’t been tried in a physical therapy setting.

Every field is a little different, and physical therapists’ electronic medical records have different needs than more general doctors.Don’t let a salesmen talk you into PT documentation software that won’t do what you need just because either he or the software is slick.

Be Suspicious of Salesmen. This is probably the best advice that can be offered. The goal of a salesman is to sell you a product. As such, they will gloss over any flaws that their software has.

This isn’t a good thing, especially if they manage to convince you to adopt a product with a user interface your team can’t use.

But we have all dealt with salesmen before. As long as we guard ourselves against slick sales pitches and keep our eyes on the goal of finding the right electronic medical records for physical therapy, there shouldn’t be any problem. Just remember to try the electronic medical records software and have as many members of your team test it out before you decide to invest.

Physical Therapy Documentation System Benefits

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | May 22, 2012 | Physical Therapy

Changing your physical therapy documentation to an automated setting is now possible. Nitin Chhoda discusses the advantages of using an electronic medical records (EMR) system that will automate your documentation process.

He specifies the benefits of using a web-based setting, and provides examples of how an automated system can provide your practice with instant access to patient records.

Physical therapy documentation has different systems. Maintaining paper records system has become something of a legacy in most industries.

Electronic databases have taken over the world, hosting large quantities of data that previously would have been unthinkable.

But despite this worldwide shift, the medical profession continues to operate mostly on paper.

Only 10% of US medical practices have a fully-integrated physical therapy documentation solution, while a slightly larger but still unreasonably small 20% have some form of electronic medical records.

That is terrible. Especially considering that web-based physical therapy documentation systems are now so powerful. There are physical therapy documentation tips provided in other part of this website.

As of the moment, here are some of the advantages that a web-based solution have over other options for physical therapy documentation.

ADVANTAGES A WEB-BASED SOLUTION

“Web-Based” Means “Available Everywhere”.

By basing your physical therapy EMR system on a web-based tool, you are ensuring that you can reach the files no matter where you are. Websites are reachable from anywhere that there is an internet connection, and this means that you could access and read over your records at home, when making house calls, or when someone needs an over-the-phone consultation.

Physical therapy documentation for physical therapy services that are based on the web make sure that your files are reachable when you want them, no matter where you want them. And that is something you just can’t do with paper records.

Send with Ease.

Just like you can access the files from anywhere, you can give other physical therapists access to your records with little difficulty.

This is where web-based solutions truly begin to beat even other physical therapy documentation systems that are based on local servers.

When your data is stuck on a server at your office, you aren’t going to be able to share them as easily as you can with a web-based server.

Access from Any Device.

Want to use your records on an iPad? No problem! A web-based solution is easily accessible on an iPad. Other local types of physical therapy documentation software usually aren’t.

Being accessible from an iPad from anywhere means that you can take a small, lightweight tablet with you wherever you go, documenting the case as you work. It makes managing each patient record incredibly simple.

And of course, if you decide that your office wants to use Mac instead of Windows computers, well, that’s no problem.

Unlike solutions that use dedicated clients to access the information, a web-based physical therapy documentation solution is capable of being viewed on any device with an internet connection and a browser.

A Single Web Server Means Less Maintenance.

Here’s something you probably didn’t think about: managing software upgrades with traditional physical therapy documentation software means upgrading every computer that runs the software and troubleshooting problems that occur on each. But with a web-first approach, a cloud-based EMR tool only has to be updated once.

All changes will instantly be pushed out to all computers that access the tool. Going web-based for your physical therapy documentation solution just makes sense. It simplifies the difficulty of server management even as it makes your data simpler to access.

Electronic Medical Records Implementation for a Physical Therapy Practice

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | May 20, 2012 | Physical Therapy

Nitin Chhoda shares several strategies to simplify and streamline the decision to adopt an electronic medical records system in your practice. The objective is to reduce the learning curve and allow your staff members to take full advantage of emerging technology.

The correct balance between hardware and software will allow the entire practice to become more efficient throughout the patient treatment cycle.

You have finally decided to take the plunge: to upgrade your practice with electronic medical records (EMR).

Electronic medical records will revolutionize how you run your practice and make life simpler for everyone who works in the office, from receptionists to physical therapists, as well as for your patients.

There are several benefits of electronic medical records, and their use in a physical therapy clinic is discussed elsewhere in this blog.

Tips on EMR Implementation

Implementing an electronic medical records system can be a little frightening. After all, you will probably be paying a fair sum of money to the vendor, and you need to know that the one you have implemented is right for you. Additionally, any transition can be difficult, as everyone will need to learn new strategies and give up their old habits.

Get your team used to using hardware

Sometimes, the implementation of an electronic medical records system may fail because the team that was supposed to use the system wasn’t comfortable with computer hardware.

If you have doctors, nurses, or any staff that don’t know how to use a computer, or aren’t skilled enough to operate the piece of software that they will be interacting with on a daily basis, you have some work to do.Don’t assume that your staff is ready. Make sure that they are.

Analyze your workflow

There’s no getting around it: an electronic medical records system is going to change how you work. You need to make sure that you – and everyone else in the office – are ready for that.
Analyze how your process currently works and talk about how it will change when you implement the EMR system.

Make sure that the process makes sense and work with the software vendor’s technical staff to make sure you understand how everything is meant to work.

Input all data

PT documentation software is only as good as the users who enter the records. Unless you add all of your paper records, your new EMR software might as well not exist.

You are upgrading to an electronic medical records system for a reason.

It may take some time, but the process of including all your patient information will mean that you won’t ever have to check in the physical records.

Because if you don’t, your staff is still going to have to check the physical records to make sure that all information has been accounted for, limiting the efficiency you are gaining.

Upgrade to the necessary hardware

This is a big one. While you can usually get away with running software on underpowered machines, it isn’t a good idea. You will have very little stability when using your electronic medical records software for your physical therapy clinic, if your computers are ancient and slow.

You will want to upgrade to hardware that will run the software optimally.Unless, of course, you are considering web-based electronic medical records solutions. These are frequently less taxing on the machine than localized PT documentation software. This is one of the major benefits of an electronic medical records system, in addition to the fact that you can pull up the data from anywhere.