CureMD HealthTech Insights Hub

Patient portals are hot in demand these days. Almost every EMR vendor is offering this facility along with their product as physicians look to meet advanced regulatory requirements and improve patient engagement. But patients are not the only beneficiary of these portals. Physicians are also benefiting as they are improving their workflows and practice efficiencies. A complete, All-in-One solution for providers which offers patient portals is CureMD EMR. Click here to learn more about it. Let’s take a look at how patient portals are beneficial for physicians: 1.        Patient satisfaction: One of the most important aspects for physicians these days is to ensure complete patient satisfaction and engagement. They are doing that by using systems which are capable of offering patient portals and helping them improve delivery of coordinated care.    2.        Reduced hassle: Not only the patients...

To ensure security of patient data, a practice needs to make sure that its health IT system is working smoothly. The EHR system of the practice should be HIPAA and HITECH compliant. It will prove that the practice is following up with the standards set by the government. There are administrative, physical and technical safeguards that the practice can take for the protection of PHI. Let’s look into some of them. Administrative safeguard: It refers to the steps and procedures made by your practice to guard and secure patient information. The administrative safeguards in the HIPAA Privacy Rule :            Relevant information systems should be identified            Risk assessment reports should be conducted      Risk management program should be implemented   The data of patients going through the treatment of HIV/AIDS needs to be especially safeguarded when assessing the ris...

Technical support is one of the most challenging parts of implementing an EHR in your practice. What are technical challenges for the vendor and the practice? How do you meet the demands of the practice by accommodating your support services according to your client needs?  Let’s lay down some steps, on how you provide technical support for an EHR . Experts —If you are using a web-based EHR, technical support experts should be available 24/7 for their customers/users. Having expertise in ICD-10 codes and Meaningful Use gives a huge edge in providing the technical support. EHR that are ICD-10 and Meaningful Use compliant requires that support staff always ready to answer any query of their customer. So, you should always keep your experts ready. Storage —The major technical challenge for an EHR is storage. It can come in variety of shapes. For example, if the practice grows, they may need more storage space in their hard drive or more computer power. Likewise, the ...

Transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 is a challenge, undoubtedly. The codes are way more in number—68,000 to be exact. First and foremost, to overcome this challenge, EHR vendors will need to train physicians and their staff on how to transition from their old coding system to ICD-10. The users of EHR must be proficient in understanding the codes efficiently or else the whole process will suffer.  Physicians are still not ready for the transition, because the opportunity cost of transferring in terms of clinical support can be high, while on the other hand EHR covers the financial sector quite well. The coding in ICD-9 is improved beyond bounds from ICD-10, but still, factors such as the ability to write something that cannot or may not be written in shape of codes is missing. This is a major factor why providers find it difficult to shift to EHR technology.  The training on EHR allows the implementation process may slow down the process of shifting, but all of the I...