When Will Technology Actually Transform Healthcare?

“Health care is overwhelmed by “fast, cheap, and out of control” technologies,” writes Joe Flower.

Every new device will revolutionize healthcare, right? We hear this all the time. And, to be fair, we’re tech nerds here in the Atlas MD office.

However, we have a major caveat to our passion for healthcare tech.

In our case, we are excited about iterating on our EMR that eliminates the waste in your direct care practice.

And by eliminating the waste in your practice, we’re helping you to re-imagine how you get paid in your practice.

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Prescription Prices Are Too Damn High

Our nation loves prescriptions.

According to researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center, “Nearly 70% of Americans take one prescription drug and more than half take two.”

It gets better. Approximately 20% of Americans use at least five prescription medications. Imagine the cost savings if Direct Care doctors directly prescribed a majority of these at wholesale prices.

Prescription drug use has been increasing steadily in the U.S. for the last ten years.

So what drugs are being prescribed, and why?

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Atlas.md EMR Update — Better Search, Better Patient Charts And More

Atlas.md EMR Update — Better Search, Better Patient Charts And More

If you’re using Atlas.md EMR, expect a significant boost in functionality. If you aren’t using the Practice Management/EMR software yet, sign up for a free trial here.

What’s new in Atlas.md EMR?

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Posted by: AtlasMD

November 5, 2013

NEW UPDATE: Atlas.md EMR Improves Search Features And More

Great news for those docs trying out Atlas.md beta. We’ve rolled out another software update. The best part about browser-based software is that you actually don’t have to update anything. Just open up Atlas.md as usual and enjoy these improvements:

Patient-Only Searches
Now you can search for what you need within a patient’s record. Find prescribed drugs, diagnoses, etc. without leaving the file. Look for new options at the bottom of the search bar: one lets you search globally and the other restricts search to the current patient record.

Now you can search inside a patient’s file or globally.

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EMRs Still Not Very Loved

David Carr is on the beat to find doctors who actually like their EMR. We’re in the process of reaching out to him since we’re excited about the new updates to our Atlas.md EMR. However, we also kind of proved his point. He interviewed a Doctor Denton, who said:

“In contrast, commercial EHR software has to be generic enough to work in many hospitals and all specialties. The result is a compromised design that doesn’t serve anyone’s needs really well.”

As a medical student interning at Intermountain Healthcare in the 1990s, Dr. Denton worked with an early electronic medical records system that was custom built for the hospital. He said it didn’t have everything you wanted, but “it worked in a way that allowed you to really do your job better.” However, he clarified, “But… they spent years and years developing it.”

It seems that the big fight in health care, in IT, in primary care, almost everywhere, is for time to make good stuff and to make stuff good. We’re fighting that fight, and here to assist any doctors who want time to practice medicine again. And we’re working on digital software that succeeds by MAKING MEDICINE MORE POSSIBLE, not by rushing to the market to collect Meaningful Use incentives.

Oh the irony, for being rewarded for mediocrity. Ayn Rand must be rolling in her grave.

READ ABOUT DAVID CARR’S SEARCH FOR SATISFACTORY EMR

Imagine a World Where Docs Blog, “I LOVE MY EMR!”

Unfortunately, that world is imaginary, for the time being. We’re still in our beta launch of Atlas.md EMR, although we’ve already rolled out some helpful updates. For everyone who has signed up for our EMR, here’s what’s available in the newest version of the app.

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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.

Disappointing Doctor Survey Serves Up EMR Optimism

We mentioned the MGMA-ACMPE survey that disclosed doctors’ struggles to adapt to rapid changes, legislative pressures and fiscal uncertainty. However, something else caught our eye.

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LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 4

LISTEN: Atlas MD Podcast, Ep. 4

The next installment of the Atlas MD podcast is now available on iTunes. You can stream it here. Drs. Josh and Doug drove out to Kansas City last week where they spoke both at a private clinic, as well as on the campus of a local medical school. Some of the students had visited Atlas MD recently, so it was a chance for them to follow-up with new questions. Doug and Josh were impressed how these MBA and D.O. students were already so attuned to the business aspects of medicine.

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Tech Win for EMR Demonstrates Concierge Medicine’s Advantages Yet Again

There’s some good news for EMR software. Box, a cloud storage and information-sharing platform used in many different industries, released a statement on Thursday, saying that they acquired an “ecosystem” of app companies and are actively expanding their healthcare offerings.

One of Box’s efforts is to create a downloadable Personal Health Record that aggregates multiple inputs. Basically they want consumers to carry around a digital medical file to take to different specialists. A few of the new companies they acquired focus on text transmission, so its presumed they want to help doctors text information more effectively, too—X-rays, notes, files and the like.

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