Atlas.md | EMR Software for Concierge Medicine

Posted by: Atlas MD

September 18, 2018

Does #directcare Have Better Quality Outcomes?

#physicianburnout is an actual hashtag that doctors are using, and some physicians are calling for a movement to make sure that burnout prevention is discussed in every meeting. But are you aware that physician burnout isn’t just some faraway concept that affects someone’s brother’s cousin’s wife? In fact, it’s a little closer than you might think, and it influences more than just the physicians.

“The U.K. researchers found that burned out physicians are twice as likely to provide unsafe care and have unprofessional behavior. They’re three times more likely to receive low patient satisfaction ratings…” (Healthcare Dive)

We didn’t need an analysis to tell us that, right? It’s a serious problem, and it’s seriously influencing the way patients get care.

But is it true what they say? That #directcare doctors provide better quality outcomes?

Well considering that a Medscape study found that “nearly two-thirds of U.S. doctors were burned out, depressed, or both” due to “EHRs and long work days…that raise their stress levels,” it makes sense that #DPC doctors are more well qualified to provide healthier care to their patients in a healthier way.

Why? Because DPC physicians don’t have the same bureaucracy, buttons to click, or boxes to check. Small, private practices have reported less instances of burnout. “Only about 13.5% of physicians in such primary care practices in New York City reported burnout, compared to the national average of 54.4%” (Healthcare Dive reported from The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine).

So the next time you’re feeling a little overextended at work, remember that you have full control of your patient scheduling, the number of patients you see, and just how deeply you let burnout creep into your practice.

Posted by: Atlas MD

September 4, 2018

#what's new

What’s New in Atlas? Billing and Enrollment Improvements

In our ongoing efforts to let you run your clinic in the way that makes the most sense for you, we’ve launched a couple new small but large features. A checkbox here, or a radio button there can mean the difference between Atlas.md being a perfect fit, and not fitting at all for some clinics.

For the rest of us, the flexibility these features add will let us know that Atlas will continue to fit perfectly no matter how your clinic grows in the future.

Handling Fee for Prescriptions

You’ve always been able to control the prices for the medications you dispense in Atlas. But a feature that is often requested in support is to add a handling fee to the prescription. Our suggestion at support has always been to divide your handling fees across your inventory and just raise prices a bit.

That amounted to more work for some clinics, and Atlas is definitely not about making you do more work… Or math. Now you can add a handling fee for your prescriptions in Atlas.md. It’s as easy as filling in a blank under your settings. Everything else is automatic. Read more about prescription handling fees here.

Shorter Patient Enrollment Form

There’s no way around it. Eventually you have to collect a lot of data about a new patient joining your clinic. Previously that information was all collected at the time the patient joined your clinic.

But some doctors worried that they were throwing just too much at a new patient. Billing info, contact info, health history, family history, medications. On and on. It’s all vital data that you need to collect, but some doctors wanted to reduce the friction at that critical moment when a patient decides to join.

Now you can enable an abbreviated enrollment form for your patients. You can collect only those absolutely necessary bits of information needed for you to contact the patient, and initiate the billing process with them. Read more about the abbreviated patient enrollment form here.

Posted by: Atlas MD

August 28, 2018

#what's new

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

August 22, 2018

Medication Markup is Just #Crazy.

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.

Improvements 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: Atlas MD

August 8, 2018

Feature Review: Do You Know How Families Work in Atlas?

When you group members of a family together in Atlas, you’re treating them in the most effective way for you and them. You can enroll them together, bill them together, set a head of household who receives notifications and acts as the primary contact, and give them access to the iOS app so they can manage their billing information and even request appointments on their schedule. Need a refresher course on all that? No problem. Watch the video below, or check out the support article.

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

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

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.

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