“I don’t believe there are any doctors in our
clinics who would go back to paper charts,”
says Dr. John Balfanz, a pediatrician with
Pediatric and Young Adults Medicine (PYAM),
a practice with five clinic sites in the eastern
Twin Cities metro area. When PYAM decided in
2004 to modernize its records systems to make
it more efficient to access patient records from
any of its clinics, they chose NextGen's EMR
system. “Many of our patients prefer to see a
specific physician and are willing to travel between
clinics to do so,” says Terri Joseph, clinic
administrator, “This gives physicians access to
the medical records from any of our five sites.”
PYAM already was using NextGen's practice
management system, which was installed
and is supported by MMIC Health IT, making the addition of the EMR
system the next logical progression in
upgrading their practice’s back office processes.
The two systems are integrated and
on a single database making it easy to switch
between a patient’s financial records and the
medical records. In addition, the EMR made
coding easier and more complete so the
clinic’s billing was more accurate.
“We planned on a break-in period of about
four months, but we actually accomplished
the transition in just two,” says Dr. Balfanz,
adding that learning to use the medical
records application was easier than they had
anticipated. Although he admits the learning
curve varied from person to person.
“For example, I find it takes me about a minute
to access patient’s immunization records,”
he says. “With paper charts I would sometimes
have to page through many pages
sometimes in order to find the information I
needed.”
Another great advantage over paper charts is
the ability to access records from home when
a physician is on call. This saves time, which is
most reassuring to a concerned parent with a
sick child.
MMIC Technology Solutions hosted its 3rd
user conference in September where more
than 100 attendees were able to network
with each other, Technology Solutions staff
and NextGen executives. Also, for the first
time, the annual conference included
a vendor fair that was highly rated by
participants.
“This was an opportunity for NextGen
users to obtain some advanced training,”
says Steve Heimel, vice president of
MMIC Health IT. “We feel it is
important to provide a local user group
meeting for those who might not choose
to attend NextGen’s national meeting. Also,
the meeting allowed participants to have
direct access to MMIC's experts and
NextGen's development team.”
MMIC experts reviewed the steps for
moving toward a paperless business office and using EMR to manage approval
processes. “These sessions were well
received,” say Beth Schultz, implementation
manager of Technology Solutions.
“Attendees came away from the meeting
with a lot of new ideas on ways they
could leverage NextGen to improve their
practice.”
Overall, the conference was rated as an
excellent experience by attendees. Everyone
learned something new and no one
went away disappointed.