Posted by: AtlasMD

September 25, 2013

One in Six EHR Users Wants to Switch

Healthcare Technology Online followed up on a poll conducted by Black Book Rankings. Looks like many providers are leaving their current EMR systems for web-based alternatives. That’s not much of a surprise, though. It only takes a mild reading of the social web’s pulse to know docs’ sentiments range from frustrated to complacent with regards to available software.

According to Healthcare Technology Online, “Healthcare providers have never had a ‘romantic’ relationship with EHRs. On the contrary, many physicians despise the technology. However, the HITECH Act and Meaningful Use (MU) incentives did create an environment of unprecedented EHR demand among the provider community. This initiative achieved the desired result of increasing EHR adoption, but it also created an artificial market for dozens of immature EHR products.”

READ MORE ABOUT THE BLACK BOOK RANKINGS POLL

Here are some noteworthy numbers that were extracted from the study:  Read more

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 25, 2013

LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 9

LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 9

A new installment of our podcast is live on iTunes. Obamacare is just a week away and the climate is already shifting. That said, we are working to better healthcare with a bipartisan approach, direct care. It’s this bottom up pressure that we believe will transform actual care.

First off, congrats to Dr. John and Dr. Henry who are busy running their new direct care practice in Pennsylvania. They are surprised to be doing the opposite of what most everyone else is doing. Ironically, it’s exactly what they always wanted to do: practice medicine.

LISTEN TO EPISODE 9 OF THE ATLAS MD PODCAST HERE

Drs. Josh and Doug answer more questions and concerns that have been brought up — Should you integrate health apps into your practice? How can doctors use this data effectively? Why is Josh such a fan of FitBit (it’s cool, connected and really helpful for starters)? Will medicine get to a point where docs can track diabetics’ A1c levels daily or weekly?

As always thanks for tuning in.

Also, Drs. Josh and Doug will be in St. Louis on Oct. 12 and 13 attending the first summit dedicated to direct primary care. Send them an email or tweet if you want to meet the docs in person.

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 24, 2013

Crickets in the EMR audience…

Zackary Berger is a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He contributed a new post to the Kevin MD blog (yes, we’re fans of Kevin, too!) because his institution recently switched from a home-grown EMR to EPIC, which as you know has been reputed to be an EPIC failure. Supposedly we’re reaching the “nexus” of electronic records and communication, a future where scientists and physicians and patients can give meaningful information and get meaningful insight in return.

Fact is, we think this future might remain for the time being just that, the future. That’s why we’re starting small, focusing our EMR on patients and docs having a meaningful electronic interaction. In time, this might lead to more paths of communication, and more meaning to be derived from digital data. The metaphor we use is this: imagine someone in a time predating the wheel, planning a system of stone roads. For now, maybe we should get the wheel spinning, and then see where we can go with it.

This complex highway of data and boxes and buttons might be a little premature. When Berger read an article by a colleague of his who is researching the use of these new EMRs he noticed something. Patients are given “access codes” in order to tap into the extraordinary benefits of these EMR programs. But guess how many people are actually activating them?

Only 20%. Hmmm, is that even a good number? Berger is wondering the same thing. We’re thinking it’s more like crickets in response to the big sell that is EPIC EMR, perhaps indicative of the disengaging reality of today’s EMRs.

READ ZACKARY BERGER’S NEW BLOG POST ON KEVIN MD

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 19, 2013

Betsy McCaughey Stands For EMR Security And Against Government Interrogations

Wouldn’t you be off put if your dermatologist asked, “How many sex partners do you currently have?” Well what if we told you that new Obamacare legislation would make these types of arbitrary questions mandatory, and necessary for all doctors to include within patient EMRs just so that practices weren’t fined? Okay, but the data will be safe within the patient EMR, right? Well, sure, maybe the government just checks to see if the box was filled out and doesn’t abuse their power. But even if kept “private” in the best case scenario, there’s a new problem — what if patients just lie in order to protect themselves, and their privacy? Well then we have a new problem, we’ve tied more of that red tape around doctors, getting them to do more tasks that accomplish nothing. This is the red tape we keep mentioning as one of many culprits contributing to expensive healthcare in America.

Yes, we’ve chosen to polarize the above assumptions to illustrate the potential setbacks of this type of legislative intrusion. Now say we take the middle ground and accept, okay, EMRs are secure and patients are honest. Why the heck does my dermatologist need to know how many people I slept with to treat an external skin condition?

READ BETSY McCAUGHEY’S STANCE ON OBAMACARE AND EMR REGULATION

Needless to say, she is opinionated, and a little assumptive. This can be a good thing, though, because we need investigative journalism to get to the bottom of what’s inside those thousands of pages of legislation. We’re guessing that as more of these line items are exposed McCaughhey will not be the only person yelling fire in this great big American healthcare theater.

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 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.