Physicians Practice - June 2008 - (Page 63) vate practices. Known as VistA Office, the open-source program is being marketed by several small vendors, but up to now has had few takers. Why? Because physicians find it difficult to customize and expensive to support. As a result, this “free” EMR costs as much as a mediumpriced commercial product. Both Republicans and Democrats have lauded the potential benefits of health IT. To date, neither Congress nor any state has approved direct grants to physicians for EMRs. But stay tuned on that one. EMR, GOOGLE STYLE Besides VistA Office, there are several so-called “free” EMRs available in the commercial space. The most publicized is the product of San Franciscobased Practice Fusion, which will charge you just $50 a month, relying instead on targeted ads to finance its remotely served EMR. Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion, says that the ads, provided by Google and other marketers, don’t pop up in the electronic record. “The messaging is non-intrusive, it’s completely private, and doctors don’t have to click on it if they don’t want to.” Howard denies reports that his company is selling de-identified data to payers, researchers, and pharma companies, but adds, “We reserve the right to.” He claims 200 doctors have signed up for the software since it was launched last October. CERTIFIED? MAYBE, MAYBE NOT “lite” version of its CCHIT-certified EMR that will sport a price tag of $2,000 max — much less than the certified version, which goes for about $4,500 per doctor. Physicians will be able to use the Web-based EMR-lite gratis for the first 100 patient visits, using digital “tokens.” You can buy extra tokens up to a maximum of $2,000, after which the program is yours. Or you can get the EMR for free by subscribing to e-MDs’ revenue cycle management (Web-based billing) services. Spring Medical Systems is selling its SpringCharts Essentials EMR for about $2,500 — half the price of its certified product. To get the full EMR, company president Jack Smyth explains, physicians merely need to pay for an activation key to turn on the other features. This modular approach makes sense if you’re leery of tackling all of an EMR’s facets at once, says Randall Oates, president of SOAPware, whose company makes one of the more popular low-cost EMRs. “As vendors, we really need to be focused on transition tools,” he says. “This big-bang approach, where you try to put in a centralized, complex system is showing a failure rate of around 30 percent. Our philosophy is to introduce the functionality at the rate a practice can adopt it.” • Ken Terry is a New Jersey-based freelance writer and the author of the book “Rx for Health Care Reform.” He can be reached at editor@physicianspractice.com. Neither Practice Fusion nor other “on-the-house” EMRs, like that of Amplus — which is supported by drug companies — have been certified by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, as all EMRs subsidized by hospitals must be. So it’s difficult to determine how their functionality, security, and interoperability compare with those of CCHIT-certified EMRs. Meanwhile, a couple of certified EMR makers are putting out strippeddown versions of their products at a reduced price. E-MDs is readying a WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM JUNE 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 63 http://PracticeSalesUSA.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://PracticeSalesUSA.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM
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