Electronic Medical Records Software

Certified EHR

The purpose of a Final Rule certified EMR / EHR is to understand the 2011 Ambulatory EHR criteria, the certification is designed to explain the benefits of certification and what else is needed to consider when physicians are choosing EHR or Electronic Medical Records Software. Every year a new concise guide to certification provides a new criteria and shows how certification of EHRs ensures that the EHR solution is a qualified electronic health records software under ARRA. These criterias will be further adjusted to meet the final 2011 meaningful use objectives required by HHS.

Qualified Physicians

Some of the requirements to qualify for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), EHR Electronic Health Records, EMR Electronic Medical Records incentives:

- Provider for Medicare or Medicaid;
- Be a meaningful EHR user
- Physicians must qualify
- Proves to have implemented a qualified EHR software and be interoperable

Physicians with a qualified EHR, qualified EMR in place before 2011 or 2012 will be eligible for the maximum Medicare incentive payments allowed by the stimulus package. Doctors who have not adopted an EHR before 2015 and who fail to obtain a hardship exemption will see a 1% cut to Medicare pay, a reduction that phases up to 3% for 2017 and remains each year after that.

e-Prescribing / PQRI

The inclusion of e- prescribing in the Medicare Modernization Act says that in 2009 and 2010, physicians who are using e-prescribing could receive an incentive payment of 2 percent of their overall Medicare reimbursement much as physicians who successfully report measures (one of which addresses e-prescribing) in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) may receive a 1.5 percent bonus in 2007 and 2008. The PQRI bonus for 2009 has been increased to 2 percent.

In 2011, however, the reward for e-prescribing will begin to decrease, a fee for not using e-prescribing will begin in 2012. The e-prescribing incentive payment will be 1 percent in 2011 and 2012, and 0.5 percent in 2013. The fee for not using e-prescribing will be a reduction in Medicare reimbursement by 1 percent in 2012, 1.5 percent in 2013, and 2 percent in 2014.

EHR Section 179

Depreciation and Expenses 2010

Section 179 limits. The maximum expense deduction you can elect for qualified property you placed in service in tax years that begin in 2009 remains at $250,000 ($285,000 for qualified enterprise zone property and qualified renewal community property). This limit is reduced by the amount by which the cost of property placed in service in the tax year exceeds $800,000

Under the 2008 Economic Stimulus Act (ESA), you can take further advantage of the Section 179 expense allowance to write off the entire cost of your new and used Healthcare equipment purchases in 2010.
Specifically, the expense allowance has been temporarily increased from $128,000 to $250,000 for taxpayers with total capital investments of $800,000 or less. Equipment acquired with a capital lease ($1 purchase option) and placed into service by December 31, 2008 is eligible for the increased allowance.

Electronic Medical Records Software

With our Electronic Medical Records Software also known as Electronic Health Records, paper charts and medical records can be either partially, or fully eliminated. Small practices can save the space their filing cabinets currently fill up. Large practices can re-assign entire rooms for storage of other items, such as medical supplies, or even secondary examination rooms. EncounterNotes Electronic Health Records Software has done this for hundreds of practices across the United States, and can do it for your practice as well, even when you are a specialist (See the medical specialties with strong demand, all other specialties are just as easy product is just one example of this).

Some Important Features

EHR / EMR, includes Scheduler

Integrated PM, one single database with EMR/EHR

Automatic ERA posting

Integrated Eligibility verification

Integrated Patient Reminder calls

Direct claims to Payers and though Clearinghouse

Integrated e-Prescribing, and/or Portal

Integrated Scanning

Registration (Check in / check out)

Rooms Management

Electronic Superbills and/or paper

Integrated faxing inbout/outbound (assign fax to chart), no third party faxing

Integrated bi-directional Labs

Integrated Patient Portal

Integrated Kiosk

Integrated Document management

Template Driven

Growth Charts

Claims Scrubbing

HL7 and HIPAA Compliance

e-Consultation

Health Education

Case Management

Business Intelligence (Dashboard and Reporting)

and many more productivity features

Is The Product Complicated?
In a word, no. If you have any experience working with such common productivity tools such as Microsoft Office, you can typically learn to use our Electronic Health Records software within a few hours. If your staff is not used to computers at all, it is important to note that training simply will be necessary.

We have training experience dating back to the early 1990s, when computer systems were not so common. No matter your computer savvy, or that of your staff, part of our job is to ensure that your system is not only installed and implemented, but being used in its most efficient manner.

How Electronic Health Records Work
In most implementations, electronic health records systems immediately create efficiencies, at a low cost. The systems use regular PCs, and no proprietary hardware, meaning the expense of adding a new workstation is relatively negligible.

A common implementation often finds workstations located in each examination room, which enables the physician, with only a click of a mouse, to pull up patient information. This patient information can include a medical history, charts, x-rays and previous conditions. Basically, everything that would normally be stored in a patient folder is available to you, at any workstation with security clearance, at any time of the day.

Obviously, for a small practice, this can mean an extremely efficient practice wherein data is not longer trucked around daily and stacks of folders are virtually eliminated. For larger practices, this can be a godsend for resources.

Staff is no longer constantly moving paper from filing room to examination room, and as a result, expenses can be saved. An office which formerly required 25 personnel might only require 20.

In fact, our clients have seen almost immediate return on investment for our electronic health records systems, simply on labor costs alone!.

Besides our Electronic Medical Records, we also provide Medical Software, Practice Management Software System, Scheduling, Medical Billing Software, Electronic Statements, Electronic Insurance Claims, Document Management, Telephony Reminder System, Telephony Lab System.