Healthcare IT News - April 2008 - (Page 20)

20 Healthcare IT News ■ April 2008 PHYSICIAN PRACTICES & AmBULATORY CARE program’s importance, Ohio physicians should still review each EMR contract thoroughly, as it may need to include practice-specific objectives that would be impossible to cover in a standard contract. To help with this, the Coker Group is providing an initial contract and quote validation review at no charge to OSMA members. “I would like to commend the OSMA for developing such a tremendous program that will help physicians purchase EMR systems,” said Troy Simon, CEO of Midwest Community Health Associates, a multi-specialty medical group in Bryan, Ohio. “Because EMR systems are such a critical and costly decision, physicians cannot afford to get it wrong.” To be recognized as a participant in the OSMA program, vendors must agree to meet the Standards of Excellence criteria. This includes such items as transfer of ownership of software licenses, amount and timing of www.HealthcareITNews.com deposits and payments, and the cost of future licenses. EMR vendors participating in the program must also offer products certified by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. The healthcare IT vendors currently signed onto the OSMA program include Allscripts, e-MDs, Greenway Technologies, iMedica Corp., Misys and Sage. More at oHIo Continued from page 17 committed to offering our members discounts on their EMR products. We are very appreciative of the fact that this group of vendors are willing to work with us to encourage the use of EMRs in Ohio.” Anderson said the new program would give practices more confidence in their decision to purchase an EMR. Jeffery Daigrepont of the Coker Group said 30 percent of the firm’s projects are spent reinvigorating or removing failed EMR systems. He believes the Ohio program would help avert much of the risk associated with some of these failures. “It says a lot about the vendors who are willing to step up and participate in a program like this,” Daigrepont said. “It truly helps level the playing field for physicians.” Anderson and Daigrepont both warned that, regardless of the new HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: oHIo 0408 MaINe Continued from page 17 Easy. Ergonomic. Economic. Carstens redesigned WALKaroo III™ now features an easy-lift cylinder with hand lever control for smooth adjustment to sitting or standing positions. WALKaroo III also features: Options: For more information www.carstensEHR.com 1.800.621.5051. of dermatology at the MaineDartmouth Family Medicine Residency, a family practice residency program that serves rural and underserved areas in Maine. The MDFMR program requires training in dermatology, which Onion says can be difficult because residents have access to so few dermatologists. The program had used slides Daniel Onion, and other online MD resources until Onion discovered an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association about VisualDx. VisualDx is a clinical decision support software system that provides more than 30 modules covering a different area of visually diagnosable medicine. The modules offer access to more than 16,000 images to help diagnose more than 900 visually identifiable diseases, drug reactions or infections. The software “is not telling them how to diagnose, but rather it provides additional tools to work with in order to hone in for a more accurate diagnosis,” says Richard Cohan, CEO of Logical Images. The software program is simple to use and requires little training, Cohan says. Clinicians enter a patient’s symptoms and other clinical findings. The system then displays photographs and key clinical information on all relevant diagnoses for side-by-side comparison. It also presents multiple images of each disease, showing how each might look at different stages and in people of Richard Cohan different ages and races. Cohan says VisualDx can be integrated with an electronic health record system, which makes the tool even more effective. Rural and community health customers receive a reduced rate for the software of around $1,500, Cohan says. Logical Images will also soon begin to sell individual modules of the software. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: MaINe 0408 © Copyright 2008 Carstens e ● Connect: CarSteNS 0408 Your Partner in the Evolution of Charting http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8998 http://www.carstensEHR.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.carstensEHR.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9001 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=9023

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - April 2008

Healthcare IT News - April 2008 Contents New Media Push Stepping Down BI Headaches Decision Grants Safety Alerts Summit 08 Growing an EHR Year 24

Healthcare IT News - April 2008

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