Posted by: AtlasMD

September 21, 2013

Year One Is Mission Critical For Your Direct Care Practice

Michael Tetreault of Direct Primary Care Journal ran a survey suggesting that 10% of direct care practices close up shop after the first year. As with any business the first year is extremely important, and a place where bankruptcy can halt any future plans.

So how can you make it through this phase, recruit patients and bring in a healthy revenue stream? DPCJ offers 7 key steps including the importance of face-time, location planning, minimizing expenses everywhere you can, and pre-planning for emergencies. We’ll stress one of their steps in particular — determining your business model and sticking with the plan. Figure out where your revenue is coming from and how you’re going to achieve that. How many patients do you need to recruit every month to stay afloat through year one? How are you going to market your practice? How well do you know you offerings so you can sell without coming across like you’re selling used cars?

CHECK OUT 7 STEPS TOWARDS DIRECT CARE SUCCESS IN YEAR ONE

We encourage docs to work with our new EMR, Atlas.md. It’s built specifically to help doctors easily collect monthly revenue and not get burnt out trying to do bookkeeping. We also encourage docs ready to take the first step to send us an email and give us a call. We’re more than happy to counsel any doc through the transition, the first year of operation, and beyond. Direct care is small, but we’re gaining recognition. And it’s only going to keep up the momentum if we work together.

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 19, 2013

An Ex-Google Health Product Manager Talks About What’s Next in Health Data

Missy-Krasner-Smiling-Small-3.1.2012AMissy Krasner was brought on to Google Health in April of 2006 — a time she calls “pre-social, pre-quantified-self and pre-internet-of-things.” Google was trying to create a central repository for consumers to collect and store their health records, and they wanted to make the APIs available for developers so they could integrate this data into their own applications. She might have been too early in the game, because Google Health rolled up shop. But Krasner is now entrepreneur-in-residence at Morgenthaler Ventures and a startup mentor. She has a lot to say about health data and its potential benefits.

Krasner says newer PHRs are getting business if they have amazing (user interfaces) — if they’re beautiful, if they have companion user apps, and they’re social. Companies don’t just say “we want to structure your data; now we want to connect you with other people who have your same illness, if you’re comfortable with that.” Leave it someone at the top of the tech industry to remind us that big companies are expecting more from technology (in opposition of that stagnant acceptance of archaic EMR still bogging down countless docs).

SEE WHAT’S NEXT IN PHR ACCORDING TO MISSY KRASNER

We’re not scaled at the level of Google, but we are on board with this type of agile thinking. That’s why we’re working to integrate FitBit into our Atlas.md EMR software. This will be the first PHR that our EMR communicates with. From there we’ll continue to iterate our software to communicate with other PHR over time, specifically ones that patients find helpful and trust using. The goal here is to facilitate healthier decisions for patients and help doctors understand what their patients habits are, and what can be done to improve their health.

Photo of Missy Krasner courtesy of Morgenthaler.com

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 18, 2013

A Day In The Life Of A Click-Happy EMR

We almost titled this post, A Day In The Morning…, because in Dr. Fred N. Pelzman’s case, he has to click through 50 meaningless fields and CTRL + ALT + DEL things, before he’s even gotten his morning coffee. Then there were the 12 arbitrary nutrition prompts that were finally whittled down to one semi-helpful question. Of course, skipping this portion required additional clicks. And don’t forget the auto-scheduling of colonoscopies ten years down the road, regardless of the fact that some patients needed a screening one, two, or five years later instead. But Pelzman describes his daily EMR experience as useful, like mashing clay in a pot with a stick and plotting patient data in cuneiform and then translating it back to English with pen and paper. Ouch. Seriously, doctor, we feel for you. We prefer our mornings meaningful, and useful, not meaningfully useless.

READ ABOUT DR. PELZMAN’S EMR EXPERIENCE ON KEVIN MD

And we agree completely. Patient care has nothing to do with how many times we click on something, how many different boxes we hastily fill out. But the way most EMR are designed nowadays, you’d think otherwise.

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 17, 2013

Who’d Have Thought Colonoscopies Could Explain it All

We’re glad that John Green directed us to this New York Times article from June. A story of Deirdre Yapalater’s colonoscopy illustrates many of the market failures driving up healthcare costs in America. The publication was kind enough to create an interactive map that lets you compare the average cost of a colonoscopy across the country, too. Very cool.

“… Ms. Yapalater recalled, she did not ask her doctors about the cost of her colonoscopy because it was covered by insurance and because ‘if a doctor says you need it, you don’t ask.’ In many other countries, price lists of common procedures are publicly available in every clinic and office. Here, it can be nearly impossible to find out.”

Yet again, we see the rebellious nature of our direct care model. Given, we aren’t performing colonoscopies here at Atlas MD, we ARE ADVOCATES FOR OUR PATIENTS, and will get in the trenches and negotiate fair prices. It’s in patients’ interest, and our interest, part of the beauty of the free market. But there’s more the article considers…

Read more

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 15, 2013

LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 8

LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 8

Tune in to the next installment of our podcast. We’re excited to announce the beta launch of our Atlas.md EMR. New users have signed up this week and we’re already receiving positive feedback. Thank you, everyone who’s adopting it.

A question we’re frequently asked is, how long does it take to transition to Atlas.md EMR? Well, no time at all really. It’s as easy as signing up for a Gmail or Facebook account. If you’ve done the former then you know it’s a matter of filling in a few fields, agreeing to the terms of service, and then jumping right in and clicking around.

LISTEN TO EPISODE 8 OF THE ATLAS MD PODCAST HERE

Drs. Josh and Doug answer more questions and concerns that have been brought up — How does Atlas.md simplify patient record keeping? Will I ever really use my EMR away from the office? Am I at risk for HIPAA violations? Is this EMR a smart investment? Is it safe to tweet a doctor? (Hint: Yes. If the NSA is concerned about a sore throat, that’s just sad.) Give it a listen. And keep those emails coming. We’re here to help.

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 10, 2013

BBC Reports “Doctor Slang” is a Dying Art

Well, the cat’s out of the bag. Doctors have been keeping their sanity amidst the pressures of a considerably serious line of work — by creating a secret language of funny acronyms. However, with the advent of EMR, acronym usage has waned. We’re going to plead the Fifth as to whether or not Atlas MD uses cryptic codes to label our patients, and whether or not Atlas.md, our direct care EMR, will render them obsolete.

That said, a panel of “PhDs” (pretentious hardly doctors) — wait, excuse us, that was a slip — a panel of “ethicists” worked to compile existing abbreviations. Yes, some were particularly offensive, like GROLIES (Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt). For the most part, doctor slang was more offensive to colleagues, though. The report indicates that in general, doctors’ notes have been kinder to patients in recent years. Also of note were variations, in England specifically, indicative of regional dialect.

READ ALL ABOUT DOCTOR SLANG ON THE BBC

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 9, 2013

EMRs Are Doing More Harm Than Good

EMRs Are Doing More Harm Than Good

If you read anything about EMRs today, make it this post from Val Jones, founder and CEO of Better Health. She depicts an EMR world that you can imagine like this: “Spend your days as a copy editor for an Indian transcription service, try to prevent patients from being labeled as syphilitics while worrying about whether or not the medicine they’re taking is classified as a tablet or a capsule in a system where you may not be able to enter any orders at all if the central tech command is fixing software instability in the Star Trek room.” Does this sound a bit absurd? Well then maybe you should read Jones’ entire post and let her explain how a technology that promised so much, wound up making things so much worse.

READ VAL JONES’ POST ON KEVIN MD

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 6, 2013

Dr. Rob Lamberts Knows What Direct Care Docs Need In Their EMR

One primary care physician has spelled out EXACTLY what he’s looking for in an EMR. He made a comparison between what current EMRs offer versus what he actually needs in his practice. We’re excited to hear his frustrations, because it proves once more what we’ve been saying for months–Atlas MD is the FIRST EMR built specifically for direct primary care physicians. And there’s nothing on the market like it.

READ THE COMPLETE BLOG POST HERE

Atlas MD is an EMR made to tell your patients story, so that you can find what you need, when you need it. It’s focused on work-flow, not billing codes (although they are included for reference if need be). It functions on ANY device you’d use in the office, not a clunky machine you paid thousands of bucks for. Atlas MD is like the innovative apps you see across other industries; it lets the user curate the experience so that what’s useful is immediately accessible.

The benefits of Atlas MD go on and on. And we’re looking forward to hearing what direct primary care docs have to say. Which, speaking of, raises an important question — do YOU want a sneak peak into our new EMR software? Would you be interested in writing about it? If so, send us an email. We can make that happen.

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 5, 2013

LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 7

LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 7

Tune in to the next installment of our podcast. Our direct care ship is sailing smoothly, patients coming in and out, some patients even tweeting about the great care they received.

We appreciate the kind words! Looks like there’s more publicity for Atlas MD, too – the direct care duo, Drs. Josh and Doug, will be speaking at the American Academy of Family Practice Docs on September 26th; the next day they will head to Colorado to speak to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

LISTEN TO EPISODE 7 OF THE ATLAS MD PODCAST HERE

Oh, and some huge news — Atlas.md EMR has launched its beta trial! Please email hello[at]atlas.md if you want to be among the first users. It’s free for the first 90 days. Click through to review some highlights from the taping.

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