Posted by: AtlasMD

August 22, 2018

Medication Markup is Just #Crazy.

a group of people chatting They’re everywhere. Everywhere. 

At the dinner table. Around the water cooler at work. In text messages between friends… accompanied by a very cranky, red faced emoji.

They’re stories about how the markup on medication is out of this world ridiculous. They come in many shapes and sizes, but these stories are important to address. They’re the most obvious red flag that the system is very, very broken.

Take, for example, the insurance agent who recently asked for an Rx price quote for a breast cancer medicine. The patient was quoted Walgreens and CVS Pharmacy $1900 and $2200 per month…. but the Atlas MD wholesale cost $6.70. Six dollars and seventy cents. Six. Dollars. Seventy. Cents.

Yes, seriously.

It seems insane that a giant retail pharmacy would make that kind of profit, but let’s give them some grace, shall we? I mean, they have a TON of overhead costs to cover. Poor things…

Sarcasm aside, the true cost of the medicine is under seven dollars. The real problem? It’s a shell game involving the cash price for the uninsured (which is ridiculously elevated) … so that they can show a discount for insured patients.

And because of gag laws set forth by the insurance companies, the pharmacy can’t tell the patient there’s a cheaper option without being guilty of breaching their contract… and that results in a hefty fine. Legislators are working to make all this go away, but it’s happening almost too slowly to notice.

So, what we can do in the meantime to fight this injustice? The answer is simple.

Tell everyone.

Tell your patients. Tell your neighbors. Tell your dog if he’ll listen. (who are we kidding, of course he’ll listen…)

Because once they know, they can take action. And the action they’ll take will be in the direction of your DPC practice’s wholesale prices. Remember: $6.70.

Never underestimate the power of eliminating the middle man, friends. It’s the platform your practice was built on. Direct Care brings transparency to life. Maybe one day we’ll say, “Hey, remember when people used to pay thousands of dollars for medications that wholesale for under ten?” Kinda like today when we say, “Hey, remember when people thought bloodletting was a good idea for common illness?” Ugh…

So, spread the word. Show your patients the alternative value proposition you offer. Fix the problem for them, and they’ll tell everyone they know. Lather, rise, repeat!

Posted by: AtlasMD

August 15, 2018

The Smallest Improvement Will Make the Biggest Difference in Your DPC Practice.

Doctor in white coat and stethescope around neck waving with one handImprovements don’t have to be big to be earth shattering.

Your value proposition as a DPC provider is the equivalent of a very long list by this point. There is no shortage of options to pick from when it comes to improving on a traditional healthcare environment. But for the sake of argument, let’s pick the moment your patients sashay through your door. What happens then?

Your waiting room doesn’t even resemble that of a traditional setting, true. But your patients’ experience isn’t determined purely by aesthetics. It’s in the personality. That’s right. Human contact.

And here’s the thing. A little goes a long way. A very, very long way. Eye contact. A simple greeting. A how’s your day going (don’t forget to listen to the answer). A little guidance on what’s going to happen next. They may seem like obvious things to you, but when a patient comes into your clinic they probably don’t know what to expect. Comfort, yes, but kindness and attentiveness, too? Whoa. Empathy is the name of the game.

Even though you’ve lived and breathed DPC for a while now, your new patients might take a little convincing that things really are as good as they seem. So while your waiting room may have all the amenities like iPads, k-cup coffee makers, a fresh scent and the absence of another human soul with whom to make awkward eye contact, don’t forget that they’re not used to this. The first impression you make goes beyond the comfort of your waiting room and straight into human interaction.

So pay attention to the small things, like a friendly smile. We bet you’ll get one in return. And then? Let the patient-doctor relationship really commence.

Posted by: AtlasMD

August 1, 2018

Four Ways Atlas Grows With Your DPC Practice.

New rule: Growth of any size is to be emphatically celebrated.

Did your patient panel hit a goal #? Did you get new brochures printed for companies in your area? Did you make a new contact at your local chamber? You know just as well as anyone that the little wins can be worthy of a full-blown dance party. Or meme party, depending on your mood.

You also know that Atlas is poised to grow right along with you in the nooks and crannies of day-to-day detail, and in the foundation that helps you expand to multiple locations while maintaining unity throughout your practice. So you can rock growth your way, at your own pace.

Today we want to remind you of a few more ways your Atlas.md EMR helps out with all this.

1. Labs

Atlas allows multiple lab integrations per account for all the providers it supports. This means each account can not only be integrated to different lab providers (Quest,  LabCorp and Mercy Diagnostics to name a few) but you can also have multiple accounts with each of those providers. Let’s break it down further: if your practice has multiple locations, each location can have its own Quest account. Keeps things simple and straightforward… and who doesn’t love straightforward?

One more note on the labs front – don’t forget that with the ELLKAY support we launched earlier this year there are literally very few limits to how many lab integrations can be connected to Atlas!
Read more

Posted by: AtlasMD

July 26, 2018

What’s New in Atlas? Efficiency and Details All Around.

The name of the game is efficiency. Not speed. Not money. Not “let’s-see-how-many-people-we-can-fit-through-the-door-today.”

In DPC, a really big part of your goal is to do what you do well in a way that allows you to spend more time with patients. It’s that simple. It’s also the theme of this new feature release announcement.

Pay for Multiple Items at Once.

Allow your patients to pay for one single line item, or several all at once with the new multiple payments feature. Your point of sale process just got a lot easier for you and your patients. Learn how over here.

Better Patient Name Recognition.

Atlas’ code just got a little smarter. Now the algorithm will recognize when certain names might sound the same, and will flag them accordingly. For example, Johnson = Jonson = Johnsen. Slick, isn’t it?

Here’s the cherry on top. Now Atlas also does a better job of alerting you to double check you’re in the right spot if a name is flagged as ambiguous. We bet you won’t miss the alert flag up by the patient’s name…

Grandfathered Pricing.

Your practice will likely change shape a bit over the years, and that’s a good thing. Now you can update your pricing tier structure to accommodate for bringing in new patients at a higher monthly rate while allowing your existing patients to continue paying their current monthly fee.

You know the drill – it’s grandfathered pricing, and now Atlas has it. Get the details over here.

More Detailed Dispense History and Exported Report.

Atlas has added more data to the dispense history page and the dispense history report. This will be super helpful when you’re working with state agencies from a compliance perspective. Also, it means fewer clicks for you when you’re checking the items you’ve been dispensing. Win-win.

Better Bank Transfer Exports.

Your bank transfer export now features all the deets, including all payments involved in each payout.

This’ll be helpful for reconciliation work, or if you’re just looking up the status of each payment.

NDC Tracking on Allergies.

Now you can use the drug autocompleter when you’re entering an allergy. And if you pick an item from said autocompleter, it’ll be tracked as a drug allergy. Why this change? You guessed it – it’ll make your data entry process easier since you can choose from an autocompleted list.

Posted by: AtlasMD

July 25, 2018

Recommended Reading: Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit

RecommendedPost02We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These posts feature a book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Latest Recommendation: Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization by Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon.

“Filled with treasure and big ideas, this book will help you become exceptional.” – SETH GODIN

In a tight market, your most powerful growth engine and your best protection from competitive inroads is this: put every thing you can into cultivating true customer loyalty. Loyal customers are less sensitive to price competition, more forgiving of small glitches, and, ultimately, become “walking billboards” who will happily promote your brand. In Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit insiders Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon reveal the secrets of providing online and offline customer service so superior it nearly guarantees loyalty. Their anticipatory customer service approach was first developed at The Ritz-Carlton as well as at Solomon’s entertainment and technology company Oasis, and has since proven itself in countless companies around the globe from luxury giant BVLGARI to value-sensitive auto parts leader Carquest, and everywhere in between. Now, readers can take the techniques that minted money for these brands and apply them directly to their own businesses. As Ken Blanchard writes, “Leonardo and Micah’s philosophies, rules, and winning examples of service excellence will make you want to implement their suggestions immediately in your own organization.” Filled with detailed, behind-the-scenes examples, the book unlocks a new level of customer relationship that leaves your competitors in the dust, your customers coming back day after day, and your bottom line looking better than it ever has before.

Honors received: 
  • A Jack Covert Selection
  • CEO Refresher Top Ten Best Business Book of the Year
  • 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year Awards Shortlist winner
  • Philadelphia Bulletin “Must Read” business book
  • Book of the Month, Las Vegas Women’s REALTOR® 
  • DearReader.com Business Book Club Selection
  • Shanghai Daily Press #1 U.S. Business Book

“If you want to deliver a superior client experience, then have every employee read this book.  That’s what we’ve done.  This volume is simply that profound, that good.” Jim S. Miller, President, Prime Performance

Put Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

July 11, 2018

Feature Review: Editing Notes

In a world where many of you are used to spending a large block of your time charting, and then amending those charts, the Notes Editing feature in Atlas is a breath of fresh air for many reasons.

With a way to edit any note, anytime, you’re not locked to the computer you originally logged the note from when you should be seeing patients instead. No need to dig to the end of a chart to find information that could be relevant at the beginning of the chart; the most accurate and best version of your note will always be front and center – right where you want it.

To tie it all together, documentation about what changed, why it changed, and by who is just as visible as the note itself.

Watch the video below, or hop over here to the support article for a refresher on how to edit your notes.

Posted by: AtlasMD

March 27, 2018

Get Credit for Referrals to Atlas.md!

Y’all remember Atlas’ referral program, right? It’s the thing where when you refer someone to Atlas and they sign up, you get a $300 credit for helping spread the word. It’s a pretty sweet deal, but now you don’t actually have to rely on word of mouth to get the credit. Share your account’s personalized referral link with your friends, and when they use it to sign up the rest happens auto-magically.

How to Get Your Personalized Referral Link.

Super easy. You can find your link by going to Account, then choosing Settings from the dropdown. Scroll to the bottom where you’ll see a heading for “Referral Program.” Click the link to learn more, and that’s where you can copy your URL.

Posted by: AtlasMD

February 27, 2018

Your Small Practice Has Everything it Needs to Succeed.

Doctor High Fiving a Young PatientYou didn’t go to medical school to fill out paperwork. You also didn’t go to medical school to learn how to run a business. Pressure’s off, though, because Atlas was built for Direct Care docs just like you. The EMR itself is intuitive about things like labs, billing, communication, note taking, practice growth and so much more. We have a pretty good idea what you need and what you don’t; we’re practicing DPC docs and need the same things!

Atlas’ goal is to give you the knowledge and tools you need to build your practice well on the Direct Care platform. Now, having said all that, you need more than an EMR to do your job well. You need counsel from those who know where the pitfalls are and can guide you around them. Someone willing to share their own experience in order to make yours better. Someone who truly supports your practice.

Atlas does that, too.

With Atlas, you don’t just get the EMR to run your day-to-day. You also get a team of conversion consultants, technical support specialists, and virtual staff to handle things like patient file imports, inventory help, and lab pricing imports. When you have help with all that, it frees you up to focus on your patients. When you focus on your patients, your practice succeeds. And when your practice succeeds, DPC makes another dent in the fight for better healthcare.

So go ahead, lean on us. We insist.

Posted by: AtlasMD

January 25, 2018

Announcing the Patient Dashboard!

Let’s talk about your patient charts. Sometimes knowing the last thing that happened with your patient is most helpful. Cue your patient’s chronological activity stream. But sometimes you want specific info front and center when you open the chart and now you have that option, too.

Let’s break it down. By default, your patient’s chart is set to a chronological activity stream so you can see the latest activity at the top of the thread. If that works for you – hey, that’s great. But if you want a big picture, aerial view, click the dashboard icon at the top right of your patient’s chart. Then watch as the patient’s information presents itself just like your main dashboard. You can drop, drag, expand, and minimize the items there so that what you need to see for that patient is right where you want it to be.

Once you’ve arranged it perfectly, your work is saved. Go ahead, navigate away from the patient’s chart. Go do your thing and come back later – the arrangement you set earlier will still be there!

Oh, and if you want to flip back to chronological view, go for it – just click the list icon in the upper right corner. Switching back to dashboard view will show you your items just as you left them – so you get the best of both worlds.

You’re dying to play with it, right? 

Posted by: AtlasMD

January 24, 2018

Growing Your Practice? You Set the Pace. Atlas Will Keep Step.

Growth: your reason, your rules, your pace.

You set out on the Direct Care journey for your reason. Maybe you wanted freedom from the limitations of a traditional healthcare environment. Maybe you were tired of having to fudge your billing codes to make a suit somewhere happy. Maybe the stack of paperwork waiting at home for you each night became too overwhelming. Maybe you wanted to live a little while also helping patients. (It’s called a social life!)

Bottom line? You’re in control. You know your patients, you know your community, you know your strengths. You know how fast or slow you want to grow your practice. If full speed ahead is your thing, that’s great; let’s make it happen. But if slow rolling growth is more your love language, that’s great, too. The beauty is that Atlas is perfectly poised to grow with you no matter how fast your strategic plan moves.

There’s nothing traditional about your practice’s growth.

This is where we say the thing nobody else will say. While growth is good, your happiness is better. Protect that happiness at all costs.

Let’s elaborate. Standard advice is to start your business and grow it as fast as you can for a better initial return on your investment, right? The marketing gurus will yell at you to GROW, GROW, GROW! The blogs will show you a million and one ways to do it.

But you don’t have to listen to them.

If you’re feeling pressured by how society says you should build your practice, take a deep breath and remember who’s in control. You. You chose this life because of the freedoms it offered, and if growing too fast too soon threatens to compromise your reasons – take a step back. Enjoy where you are right now, and slowly plan your next move. Read more