ENT EMR CCHIT, The skinny on Otolaryngology Software

EMR, electronic medical records, have been a constant at the American Academy of Otolaryngology Annual Meetings since I was a resident. The AAO-HNS has an OTO-Expo (its trade show) at the annual meetings. The OTO-EXPO has seen the number of EMR vendors start with just 1 vendor and climb up to, I believe, a peak of 13. AllMeds EMR has held the consistency spot being there every year for the last decade. NextGen, AllScripts, Greenway, MiSys, and a few others have joined the scene.

AllMeds, Greenway, and Misys have progressed from being small startups to now being sponsors of major events. The AOA, Association of Otolaryngology Administrators, now lists AllMeds as a platinum sponsor, Greenway as a gold sponsor, and Misys as a silver sponsor. The AOA and the AAO-HNSF do not endorse one EMR over the other.

The AAO-HNS has multiple lectures and seminars on practice management systems and electronic medical records. Dr. Tom Upchurch, an otolaryngologist and co-founder of AllMeds, has been a perennial speaker at these events. To his credit, he has maintained his objectivity during these presentations. The first time I heard him talk about EMRs, I realized the pain that we would all be going through. Tom is a visionary and is a mentor to me. He has an interest in what we are trying to build out.

I expect the crowd at AAO-HNS conference in San Diego scheduled for Oct 4 through Oct 7 to be bigger than ever despite the economy. With the stimulus package encouraging IT expenditures, ENTs who have been sitting on the fence will come out in force. Having recently listened to Karen Zupko at a conference extolling the potential government money to be had, and watching the fall in PC prices, the return on investment is so much faster than when we bought ours.

Karen Zupko and her firm Karen Zupko & Associates, KZA for short, have presented at the last several AllMeds user conferences. At each conference she has shown the improving rates of return with EMRs. When she first started advising ENT surgeons, the software choices for Otolaryngologists were minimal. Now there is a plethora and the gaps between them are closing. But every single one of them still has the same problem….the people at small offices like yours and mine who have to run them.

So which EMR did we choose and how did we pick it? We started our review of EMRs in 2002. Having looked over AllMeds, Greenway, Misys, and a dozen others, we picked AllMeds. At that time, AllMeds had the greatest number of ENT users. If I am biased towards AllMeds, it would be out of familiarity. I would love to be able to have all the EMRs available to me on a regular basis to test them out and try them. I called all the software providers to see if they would be willing to provide a fully functioning product for me to keep on our test servers. Only AllMeds, GE, and AllScripts called back. AllMeds was kind enough to give me a second software package to put on teaching/training servers. GE will participate in the Fall. All you other EMR Companies….still waiting for the software to test.

What makes comparisons between EMRs frustrating is that testing is not done in the same fashion that cars are tested. It is easier to spend $50,000 on a luxury vehicle than on an EMR. Test-driving it at a convention floor or even in your own office for 15 minutes does not really tell you how it would work in your daily grind. AllMeds has made it easy for me to let you do a test drive. Contact me and we can make this happen.

Say CCHIT three times fast. As acronyms go, this does not bode well when trying to make a sale. In the early days, EMR users did see sh*t. The software was not robust or interoperable and the hardware was expensive. CCHIT stands for: Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. CCHIT has been a blessing and curse to the EMR world. It has forced EMR vendors to improve aspects of their software, but also raised some onerous demands. CCHIT inhibits and promotes natural selection of EMR companies. If you are an EMR designer with a very novel approach, you may find yourself running up against a wall of standardization. But overall, the goal of CCHIT is to provide buyers/users some degree of security and interoperability. The CCHIT website goes into detail and has volunteering opportunities.

Email me about your EMR purchasing decisions and if you have changed your EMR. AllMeds claims to have a 94% retention rate. We are in our fifth year of using their software. AllMeds nor their competitors have given us reason to change. So I need to hear from those of you with different systems. While this blog is directed toward the ENT community at large, I welcome feedback from doctors of all stripes. Please include any industry affiliations. Lets get the skinny on EMR for otolaryngologists.