Posted by: Atlas MD

May 3, 2021

A Moment to Say Thank You

It’s been a strange year, and, for many of us, one of the hardest in known memory. We’ve had to sacrifice in every possible domain of our lives – our work, our freedoms, and our health.

But perhaps no one has had to sacrifice more than the healthcare workers who, when called upon to keep us safe, rose unflinchingly to the challenge. While many stayed inside doing their part to halt the spread of the virus, those working in healthcare were in the labs, in the hospitals, and on every healthcare frontline working tirelessly and fearlessly to protect everyone. It’s because of them, and you, that we can see a light at the end of the tunnel, that we have managed the miracle of developing an effective vaccine in an impossible timeframe, and that we will find a way back to normal.

When we made Atlas.md, we wanted to help doctors connect with patients in order to provide higher quality care – and more of it. But we never imagined just how essential this tool would become, and how effectively it would be wielded by our doctors to help others in a time of crisis.

There is no update today. We just wanted to say that we see you – everything you’ve achieved, and everything you’ve sacrificed – and to say thank you for everything you’ve done. Who knows what the world would be without you.

Posted by: Atlas MD

August 28, 2018

What’s New in Atlas? Improvements to the Billing Section

DPC is such a simple concept. But still clinics find many ways to make their businesses unique. One of our most often requested category of features has to do with billing flexibility. So we’re happy to announce two of our most often requested features.

Service Fees
Though many DPC clinics operate under a subscription model, many of our users are also beginning to offer bolt-on services. Procedures and services that go above the standard subscription fee.
Though you could always make special one-off charges to patient accounts, it never quite felt built in.
This week we’re launching a new service fees section inside of your billing tab. It allows you to create these optional services and their corresponding prices.
Then when you perform the service, you can add that charge right to the patient’s invoice with a single click. Learn more about the new service charge feature here.

Enrollment Fees
Another way Atlas users are customizing their billing structure is to add an enrollment fee at the time of patient sign up. Like with Service Fees, you could always hack this with a misc. charge, but it’s better when it’s built in.

Enrollment fees have a separate billing category and have full company coverage support, so companies can decide exactly how they want to cover for their employees.

Now under Settings / Clinic Extra Charges you can specify an enrollment fee. Then when adding a new patient, adding that fee to the patient invoice is a simple checkbox during account creation. What used to be four steps is now one. Better yet, they’re broken out in billing reports so you can see just how they affect the bottom line. Read more about the new enrollment fee feature.

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

September 21, 2017

Atlas Welcomes New Docs After InLight Leaves EMR Business.

Transitions are part of life. Some are simple, others are messy. Some are quick, and others take time. Some pose as a welcome change, and others don’t even ask our permission. And still others are a little bit of all that depending on the day.

We know how hard that transition season can be, and we’re poised to help you through your version of it – whatever it might look like. Whether you’re transitioning from a traditional healthcare environment to DPC, transitioning from a one-man-shop to a practice with employees, or transitioning from a one-location practice to a multiple-locations practice, we’re here to help. We offer free practice management consulting to answer even the smallest of your questions about how to do it DPC-Style.

As you’ve probably heard, InLight recently left the EMR business. So if you’re new here, welcome!

If you’ve joined Atlas from InLight, your transition is one of process, and details. That can be difficult on a totally different level! But even though you may be having a hard time getting a hold of files, we’re here to help you through this, too. We’re doing everything we can to help clinics transition smoothly; you’ve got the Atlas community standing behind you now, and we will fight for your success just like we fight for our own.

If you have questions about transitioning to Atlas, we encourage you to reach out to support@atlas.md, or go join our Facebook group. We’ll get your questions answered so you can get back to doing what you do best: helping patients.

Posted by: AtlasMD

August 24, 2017

What’s New in Atlas.md? Making Multiple Locations Work for Your Practice.

Lots of practices have multiple locations, which is fantastic. But each of you are growing a little bit differently, and Atlas wants to account for that.

We’ve added support for more location flexibility so you can run your practice however it works best for you and your patients. We’ll run through the details so you can get back to it.

Inventory Selection Flexibility

Now when you write a new prescription, you can choose from which location’s inventory you’re dispensing. Pretty great, right?

So if you’re a doctor who floats between branches and you find yourself dispensing from one location today and another tomorrow, now you can accurately dispense from the correct location no matter where you are.

That goes for patients, too! If you encourage patients to go to whichever branch location is more convenient for them, you can dispense from whichever location they choose. This added flexibility makes properly managing inventory more convenient for you. Read more

Posted by: AtlasMD

August 8, 2017

Want to Integrate Atlas.md With Your Favorite Lab? All it Takes is an Email.

It’s official. Atlas.md is putting the choice of who you use as your lab provider back in your hands.

We’ve partnered with ELLKAY, a company who acts as a go-between for Atlas and other lab providers. Get this. ELLKAY has one of the largest collections of lab integrations in the U.S., making many of them plug and play for Atlas. And for those lab providers ELLKAYhasn’t already integrated with, it may take a little more time, but it’s still totally possible. ELLKAY speeds up the process and even opens the doors for smaller labs to interface directly into Atlas.

Here’s the best part. All your practice needs to do is tell us who you want to integrate with; ELLKAY and Atlas will do the rest. So send an email with your lab’s contact info to support@atlas.md and check it off your todo list.

The choice is yours, and that’s how it should be. Each lab has their own minimum volume level requirements for integration, but if you have a really great relationship with a particular lab provider, Atlas will support you so you can keep working your way.

Posted by: AtlasMD

July 11, 2016

What’s up with MACRA? Mass Exodus.

MACRA is happening in January, and Direct Care is waiting with arms wide open.

Okay, let’s backtrack. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) is expected to result in penalties for 59% of physicians in practices that have fewer than 25 clinicians. But what exactly is MACRA? Medscape.com explains.

“MACRA replaced Medicare’s sustainable growth rate formula for setting physician reimbursement with the Quality Payment Program, which represents a shift from fee-for-service to pay-for-performance. The Quality Payment Program has two tracks: the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), which most physicians will initially participate in, and Advanced Alternative Payments Models for physicians more accustomed to getting paid based on how they perform on quality and cost-control measures.”

So what’s the result of all this? That’s where the exodus thing comes into play.

“Almost four in 10 physicians in solo and small group practices predict an exodus from Medicare within their ranks on account of the program’s new payment plan and its punishing penalties.”

For small practices, sticking it out in traditional healthcare won’t be easy.

A small business is hard enough to keep afloat without rules and regulations constantly trying to drown it. We get rules are there for a reason, but at what point is it all just too much? And how on earth is everyone supposed to keep up?

“CMS is trying to allay physician fears about MACRA. It has budgeted $100 million during the next 5 years to help small practices get up to speed on the law. The agency acknowledges that complying with MACRA, particularly its reporting requirements, promises to be harder for smaller practices than bigger ones, which have more financial and personnel depth.”

That’s a 5 year learning curve a lot of docs won’t put up with, and quite honestly we don’t blame them. But instead of throwing in the towel, or even getting frustrated, imagine your career in a different light. One that you shed directly on your patients. It’s true – some physicians come to Direct Care out of frustration. But in this case, the grass is definitely greener on the other side. So come on over.

Direct Care isn’t just any solution. It’s a good solution.

Let’s consider the alternative to penalties and a laundry list of rule and, consequently, lifestyle changes. You’re looking at the opportunity to make your own decisions. To free yourself from the restrictions third parties hold you down with. To spend your time focused on patients rather than buried under a mountain of Medicare paperwork. All this freedom doesn’t mean sacrificing income, either. It only means a lot fewer paper cuts.

Update: It hasn’t even been implemented yet, and MACRA is already breaking down. See why “962 pages of gibberish” is causing an uproar and may essentially cause a delay in the new rule’s launch…

DPC Gets the Spotlight in Powell, Wyoming.

Wyoming_01Quality over quantity. That’s what’s being praised via the Physician of the Year Award in Wyoming. So without further ado, a very well-deserved congratulations goes out to Dr. Tracy for earning this award. Not only is he one of the pioneers of Direct Care, he’s done it so well, in fact, that he’s being recognized on a state level. That means he beat out all the traditional docs for the title… which tells us he (and his EMR… which happens to be Atlas.md!) is doing something really right.

Not surprisingly, he’s super humble about the whole thing.

“It’s a real surprise and it is an honor to have this award given to me,” Tracy said. “There are a lot of deserving people in the state. I think about the people who have received the award in the past and it’s been for contribution in one way or another in the field of medicine making this state a better place to live and practice medicine, so it really is an honor.”

It’s difficult to break the mold of traditional healthcare. The scissors that cut red tape can get a bit heavy sometimes. And like any new business, the first years are tough. But Direct Care practices across the country are proving it can be done with the right tools… and the right outlook. It turns out that when you truly put the needs of your patients and community above all else, good things happen. Your genuine efforts to improve the lives of those around you make a bigger impact than a pile of paperwork ever could.

DPC docs aren’t in it for the accolades. But we’re certainly grateful for the positive attention awards such as this show our industry.

More Than a Million Bucks in Savings. Horn, Tooted.

Saving patients money is a huge part of what Direct Care’s all about. There are all kinds of ways DPC is geared to do it: low monthly subscription fees instead of outrageous insurance premiums, the reassuring mentality that patients only pay for what they need, and last but certainly not least is that DPC offers wholesale prescription prices – something that immediately (and very visibly) helps ease the pressure on bank accounts everywhere.

On that note, Atlas.md is having a really proud moment to the tune of more than a million dollars…

MillionDollarsAtlas.md was created by DPC docs who are literally on the front line of the Direct Care movement. They thought of everything, and their EMR is how they walk the walk. From fully supporting in-house pharmacies so it’s easier to offer wholesale prescriptions to pointing out GoodRx coupons when they’re applicable, Atlas.md helps its docs save their patients money on the regular. But just how much are we talking? This EMR has saved patients who belong to a DPC practice using it upwards of one million dollars.

The best part? That number continues to grow every single day. Just like support for Direct Care.

 

Connect With LabCorp and Work Easier

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There’s been a lot to be excited about recently — your ability to accept ACH payments at a reasonable price, an opportunity to save 40% on insurance and a forum to keep you connected to other DPC docs, but now, there’s a new way to make running your practice even better.

You can now integrate with LabCorp to make tracking, requesting, and printing labs possible right from Atlas.md. This new addition will provide you and your patients with more possibilities and more flexibility. You’ll be able to do the following, right from Atlas.md:

  • Request labs from LabCorp
  • Print specimen labels directly from Atlas
  • Retrieve and integrate LabCorp results into your patients’ charts

When you’re ready to sign up, connect with your local LabCorp representative. You’ll receive an Atlas account number so that you can streamline the ordering, printing, and tracking process, right from Atlas.md. If you have any questions about this process, or if you want to reach out about your practice, feel free to connect with us by sending a note to support@atlas.md.