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: Atlas MD

March 6, 2018

New EHR Study Proves U.S. Physicians Want More Time With Patients.

Physician checking boy's heartbeatInefficiency strikes again, it seems. But not how you might think.

A new study on how much time docs spend using their EHRs released its findings last month. Medscape broke it down and you can read the whole thing here if you want.

The article says EHR time exceeds patient face time in family practice visits. The study results imply that, “US [family physicians] spend more time working in the EHR than their European counterparts spend in the entire visit.”

This could very well be true for a whole lot of reasons. But we see things from another perspective. We think physicians in America are doing what they have to do in order to provide the best care possible for their patients. They’re required to document certain things a certain way, for certain (sometimes inexplicable) reasons. Sure, they could document all the things right there in the exam room with the patient. They could spend a majority of the visit staying caught up for fear of what falling behind will do to their evening (again).

But most of them don’t.

They know they only have a few sacred minutes to serve their patient well, and they want to make the most of it. So they’ll sacrifice their evening (yes, again) just so they can look their patient in the eye. Take time they don’t have to ask some quality questions and do what med school taught them.

It’s not their fault. They’re doing their best with what they have, which is limited time and a lot of mandatory paperwork. The system is broken and docs are among the victims.

These types of articles are full of numbers, and it’s good someone’s keeping track. At the end of the day, though, the results of this study give us renewed hope that more docs will opt for Direct Care instead of letting burnout get the best of them. The heart wants what the heart wants… and it’s not paperwork.

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: Atlas MD

February 12, 2018

Educating the Next Generation: Inviting Med Students and Residents into Your DPC Practice.

When DPC first introduced itself to healthcare, there was a lot of patient education involved. Nobody knew what it was, how it worked, if they could even trust it.

Things have changed quite a bit since 2010, haven’t they?

There are Direct Care practices opening up every day across the country – each serving their community in a unique, personal, transparent way.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things there’s still a long way to go, but Direct Care is finding its way into the homes and hearts of millions of Americans. Which means our duty as practicing DPC providers is not only to our patients, but to the next generation of providers as well. There are any given number of traditional healthcare environments a med student or resident can walk into and get a glimpse of. We need to make sure we open our doors to them as well. But we have to take it a step further. Read more

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

Posted by: Atlas MD

November 6, 2017

What’s New in Atlas.md? Faxing PDF Attachments, That’s What.

We’ve been excited about releasing this feature for a while now, and we know you’ve been looking forward to it, too. Today we get to share the good news that you can now fax PDF chart attachments right from Atlas.md. We have big plans for expanding this feature’s reach as time goes on; this is juuust the beginning.

So here’s how it works.

When you upload a PDF to a patient’s chart, you’ll now notice a fax icon over to the right. From there, the process is just like you’re used to.

It’s cost-effective, too.

Faxing costs your practice 7 cents per page. Before you send the fax, you’ll see an estimate of your total, so you’ll know exactly what you’re being charged. Full transparency is the name of the game, so you’ll also find your cost included in your clinic’s next subscription billing cycle, using the credit card you already have on file with Atlas.

Let’s talk about file size.

We know you guys are super efficient, so you probably won’t run into a size problem… but just in case we thought we’d mention it. You can fax pretty much anything, as long as it’s under 20 MB, and under 200 pages. Anything bigger or longer than that won’t go through. If it did, we might feel sorry for the guy on the other end of the fax…

So that’s all there is to it! You can now fax PDF attachments from inside Atlas. Now, go play with the new feature. You know you want to.

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 28, 2017

What’s New in Atlas.md? A Smarter Workflow Wins Every Time.

Smarter Exporting

When you’re sharing patient details, you now have the option to specify the date range for what you’re exporting, printing or emailing. Just select “custom date range” from the date range dropdown and select your start and end dates. Read about it here.

When you’re exporting data for multiple patients you can now include Health Maintenance data in the export. This’ll make it easier to review possible targets for exams, physicals, etc. since you can quickly sort your Excel file by ‘exams’ for example. Get the details over here.

Labs Updates

On the Recent Labs Results dashboard widget, you can now mark a notification as “read,” so only the info that still needs your attention is front and center.

Now you can email out Custom Lab results the same way you can email out other attachment files! Just click the “email” icon when you hover over the note in the stream.

Did you accidentally request a lab wrong? Now you can delete them in Atlas so you can keep a tidy and accurate chart. Deleting the request won’t change anything on the Lab’s end, though – you’ll still need to deal directly with them for anything that might have already been processed.

Macros!

Introducing Shared Macros! Now you can create a macro and share it with everyone else on your account. You can edit an old macro to be sharable moving forward, or create brand new ones to share with the team. Learn how to manage shared macros over here.

It wouldn’t be a features release if we didn’t have a few new macros to talk about, right? We’ve added a new macro for Contacts: #contact, and new macros for patient age and gender: #patientage #patientgender. Review the full list here!

Faxing Updates

Now your real fax numbers displays on the caller ID, which means the pharmacies whose heads explode at the sight of an unfamiliar fax number coming through on prescriptions can rest easy. Does your practice have multiple locations? No problem, the caller ID will respect the location sending the fax.

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

September 15, 2017

The Value Proposition You Don’t Value Enough.

Value Proposition for Direct Care PracticesWe talk a lot about value added propositions. Here, here and here for example. As you probably already know, we’re referring to the value you bring to your patients. Your value comes in many shapes and sizes – your flexible schedule and extended appointment times, your ability to open your doors at almost any time, your willingness to answer the phone, email, text, or video call at all hours, not to mention your steadfast devotion to saving your patients money at every turn.

But there’s one piece of value you offer your patients that, whether they say it out loud or not, is actually invaluable to them.

You put the power back in their hands.

It starts at the top. The freedom to opt out of a convoluted healthcare system held together by red tape is liberating in itself, but the benefits just keep coming. Nobody’s telling them what to do. No insurance or third party regulations of which the fine print must be scoured. Your patients do their research, and weigh what Direct Care offers against the alternative. The choice is theirs. They make the decision, and they can feel good about the consequence.

Because after they sign up, they see that the power stays in their hands. Read more