EMR Portals from EMRConsultant.com http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/index.php Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:32:32 +0000 240 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/177-clinical-trial-for-behavioral-outcomes/
Clinical trial to study whether access to PP will change outcomes.]]> Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:32:32 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/177-clinical-trial-for-behavioral-outcomes/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/174-preliminary-findings-by-brigham-and-womens-portal/

Preliminary study on the use of patient portal by B&W and Partners Healthcare System]]> Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:06:03 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/174-preliminary-findings-by-brigham-and-womens-portal/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/528-how-effective-are-portals/ Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:56:28 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/528-how-effective-are-portals/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/126-portals-are-they-really-useful/
How important is it to have a good portal in your software?

It seems like the ones with good portals cost a lot more. I guess I just want to know if it is worth the extra money?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.]]> Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:29:09 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/126-portals-are-they-really-useful/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/110-this-is-truly-a-life-saving-use-of-a/
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 03/25/2005 -- Nemours (one of the nation's largest pediatric subspecialty group practices) and JEA (the eighth largest municipal electric, water and sewer utility in the U.S. and the largest in Florida) will begin monitoring chronically ill children in their home using a wall socket to carry the children's medical information back to doctors at Nemours. This is a first for the nation and a first in pediatrics -- to use Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) in connection with medical monitoring of patients in their home.

Remote monitoring technology is in limited use in the United States. Usually implemented via telephone lines, it has proven very successful at improving patient outcomes. However many households, particularly those with very sick family members, do not have the financial resources to support telephone service. Encounters involving BPL will utilize a simple electric wall socket. Nemours and JEA plan to successfully demonstrate this method of service through a pilot program using technology in a way that is not being offered anywhere else in the United States.

Introducing BPL technology to remote home monitoring technology aligns with President George W. Bush's priority expansion plan for all Americans to have access to broadband technology by 2007 as well as his mandate to seek innovative ways to deliver medical services more effectively using new technology.

"Remote home monitoring will some day be routine for most patients," said David J. Bailey, MD, MBA, Vice President of Patient Operations and COO of Nemours. "E-health visits will extend a trend in health care delivery -- one that transcends geography, increases patient access, improves outcomes, easily stores the information in a patient's Electronic Medical Record, and reduces overall health care costs."

The remote home monitoring via BPL experience involves a pediatric asthma patient interacting with a clinician, from the comfort of his/her own home. Each e-visit will involve a patient sending biologic information from a spirometer, pulse oximeter, dose counter and stethoscope to the clinician in "real time." That information will be interfaced with Nemours' Electronic Medical Record, creating a more complete picture of that child's health status.

"Home monitoring enables nurses and physicians to extend care beyond the traditional clinic visit and removes traditional geographic barriers to medical access. It allows care for a patient in his/her own home environment -- where the most chronic asthma attacks actually occur," said David Schaeffer, MD, Chief of Pulmonology and Allergy at Nemours Children's Clinic in Jacksonville. "This project has enormous potential to advance the continuum of care to patients, and empowers them to manage their illness using state-of-the-art technology that is patient-friendly and designed to interface with the Electronic Medical Record."

Once the data is received by Nemours, it will automatically be inserted into Nemours' Electronic Medical Record. From there, it will be viewable by Nemours' physicians and nurses from anywhere in the world.

JEA has been evaluating the use of BPL as a means of leveraging existing infrastructure to provide communications to enhance the reliability of its current facilities. This pilot project will allow the utility to field-test the technology to determine if it will create a more intelligent and secure infrastructure. This includes increasing the reliability of the JEA electric distribution by improving applications such as outage notification, automatic meter reading and power grid monitoring.

This pilot project will involve up to 10 JEA facilities and up to 70 patients Nemours has identified for medical support.

Nemours and JEA were selected, along with 26 other organizations from a field of 494 applications, to receive a collective $14.4 million in funding for a Technology Opportunities Program grant, from the U.S. Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Nemours selected ViTel Net to supply the program with remote home monitoring equipment because of their unique capability to integrate medical devices needed to properly monitor children remotely, and to be able to rapidly modify standard software to the specific requirements of the Nemours' workflow and processes. The devices will be provided to patients at no cost to them for the duration of the project.

About Nemours

Nemours provides institutions and services to improve the health of children. Employing over 400 pediatric physicians, subspecialists and surgeons, Nemours cared for more than a quarter of a million children during more than three quarter of a million encounters in 2004, making Nemours one of the nation's largest pediatric subspecialty group practices.

In addition to the many ongoing research, education, health and prevention programs, Nemours owns and operates the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, and major children's specialty centers in Florida (Jacksonville, Orlando and Pensacola), Pennsylvania (Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr), New Jersey (Atlantic City and Voorhees) and several primary care pediatric practices throughout Delaware. Additionally, the most visited health care Web site online for children and teens, www.kidshealth.org is a project of Nemours.

Nemours is affiliated with the Mayo Clinic, Thomas Jefferson University, University of Florida, University of Delaware, Christiana Care Health System, Baptist Medical Center (Wolfson Children's Hospital), Orlando Regional Medical Center (Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women) and Sacred Heart Children's Hospital. Additional information can be found at www.nemours.org

About JEA

JEA is the eighth largest municipal electric, water and sewer utility in the U.S. and the largest in Florida. JEA currently serves more than 360,000 customers in Jacksonville and parts of three adjacent counties. More information about JEA may be found at www.jea.com

About ViTel Net

Founded in 1989, Visual Telecommunications Networks, Inc., better known as ViTel Net (www.vitelnet.com), offers Telemedicine applications and scalable, remote health monitoring throughout the Continuum of Care. Based in McLean, Va. -- just minutes from downtown Washington, DC, ViTel Net can rapidly and seamlessly integrate an enterprise-wide suite of proven solutions into any existing healthcare infrastructure -- taking full advantage of legacy technology investments while introducing new, profitable or cost-saving business-expanding capabilities.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact:
Odette Struys
National Media Relations Manager
Nemours
Tel: (904) 232-4186
Fax: (904) 232-4180
Email: ostruys@nemours.org


SOURCE: Nemours]]> Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:01:43 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/110-this-is-truly-a-life-saving-use-of-a/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/254-article-getting-paid-for-e-visits/ Doctor visits move into cyberspace

By Carol M. Ostrom

Seattle Times staff reporter

There are lots of reasons why you'd want to "see" your doctor virtually instead of face to face: Save time. Not inhale germs in a coughing-sneezing-snuffling waiting room. Have time to describe your symptoms.

Your employer likes the idea that you wouldn't have to leave work for hours.

But your doctor, despite believing that the episodic, crisis-care nature of office visits isn't the best for managing most chronic conditions, most likely has shunned computer patient "visits" for one perfectly good reason: Health insurers won't pay for them.

A pilot project at Microsoft may change that.

More than 5,200 Microsoft employees, about 100 Virginia Mason doctors, and health insurer Premera Blue Cross have teamed up to test something new in the Northwest: reimbursing doctors for providing non-emergency health care online.

Patients e-mailing doctors isn't new, but it's been limited to health-maintenance organizations (such as Group Health) or scattered practices that must charge extra fees because until recently, reimbursement by insurers wasn't possible: "Cybervisits" didn't have a "code," the number issued by the American Medical Association that allows health providers to bill insurers. In 2004, that all changed when the AMA issued a new, temporary code for such consultations.

The 18-month pilot at Microsoft, which began Jan. 1, will begin testing a template for online doctor consultations, paying doctors $30 per online visit, considerably less than what doctors typically get for an office visit. The patient pays nothing.

Rather than a totally free-form e-mail exchange, the "webVisit" protocol designed by California-based RelayHealth uses a structured set of questions and "branching logic" to elicit the information your doctor would need to diagnose you and recommend treatment. The form allows patients to send messages to their doctors.

The doctor can be expected to reply via e-mail within 24 hours and, if needed, order a prescription.

Logistical questions

Whether the program continues after its trial period and whether it becomes more widely available depend on the answers to some crucial questions: Do such online consultations make health care more effective and efficient? Will they end up saving — or wasting — time for patients or doctors? What will be the financial impact on Microsoft, a self-insured company?

There are other pressing questions, as well. For example, does a structured "interview" work better than a free-form e-mail exchange? Or how do such online consultations get integrated into the patient's permanent record?

This pilot will require Virginia Mason to input the online information manually into the patient's electronic record, because the two systems aren't compatible, said Marnee Iseman, Virginia Mason vice president for ambulatory services.

"We're not very happy about the work we're going to have to do," she said. But, she added: "We think it's dangerous to run multiple systems, so we're not going to let our patients do that."

Eventually, the health-care industry will have to solve the problem of incompatible electronic systems, she said.

Convenient, efficient

Amanda Johnson, a 34-year-old Microsoft manager, expects online consultations will help her cope with her 3-year-old's frequent ear infections without having to leave work for two hours or more for a doctor visit.

"I've dealt with them before," Johnson says. "I know the symptoms that occur prior to each ear infection."

She expects the service will be a "huge convenience" for her.

Tom McPherson, senior benefits manager at Microsoft, says that, on average, employees there visit their doctors 3.5 times per year. That adds up to considerable cost to the company both in benefits and in time lost. "We're looking to be creative and innovative, not only to offset health-care costs, but to provide high-quality care," he says.

In particular, he expects employees with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes to benefit. The more engaged patients are with their health-care provider, he says, "the healthier they will be, and the less costly for the company providing health care."

Dr. Tom Numrych, a Virginia Mason pediatrician, says e-mail can be a much faster way to communicate with patients than playing phone tag. "I think this is just a huge step forward to increase communications with patients."

Furthermore, "if Microsoft is able to keep their employee there, not spending two hours going in for an office visit, that's a huge benefit for them."

Premera's medical director for quality, Dr. Roki Chauhan, believes the structured "interview," compared to a free-form e-mail exchange, condenses a "back-and-forth that might take days."

In other, early tests elsewhere in the country, online consultations saved money, but Chauhan said Premera's actuaries wanted more data, which he hopes will be provided by the pilot study. Businesses, which ultimately pay the costs, will have to be convinced.

So will some doctors, who would rather not get insurance involved.

Avoiding the insurer

In Bellingham, the Family Care Network charges $7 a month for e-mail access to its 44 providers. More than 450 patients pay for the service, said Dr. David Lynch, a family doctor and vice president of clinical process improvement for the network, a group of family doctors working at 11 locations in Whatcom County. He believes theirs is the largest single group of patients in the country paying for e-mail access.

"We think when you can improve patient access and satisfaction, decrease costs, meet the needs of providers and patients, it ought to be a home run for everyone."

But Lynch thinks getting insurers involved is a bad idea.

"As soon as you get insurance involved, the cost goes up exponentially," he said. "Our desire is to work directly with a patient."

Lynch's network is only one of many indications that patients around Puget Sound are enthusiastically embracing such online consultations. But widespread use of the technology has been held up, in large part, by the reimbursement issue.

Up to now, providers who have adopted some form of e-mail consultation have had either to be a provider-insurer where reimbursement wasn't an issue — such as Group Health Cooperative, where 162,000 patients have signed up since the service began in 2002 — or to charge patients an additional fee.

For example, four doctors in a "Partnership in Health" program at Seattle's Polyclinic charge $25 per month per patient for various "extra" services, including e-mail access, in addition to billing insurers for covered services.

Carol M. Ostrom: 206-464-2249 or costrom@seattletimes.com]]> Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:16:29 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/254-article-getting-paid-for-e-visits/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/273-any-doctors-using-patient-portal/
With any new technology, it's difficult at first to get the story. Who can help us out?]]> Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:43:53 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/273-any-doctors-using-patient-portal/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/88-question-about-portals/
I've been looking into EMRs with Patient Portals. It seems as if they have a variety of different capabilities. Some allow for just appointment scheduling and refill requests. Some seem to be more robust, including the ability to have the patient send medical information to the doctor (such as BP, Glucose...), and then have the doctor change their treatment protocol, as needed.

Does anyone have a list of all of the capabilities that are available in various portals?

Thanks.

Q]]> Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:22:49 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/88-question-about-portals/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/1158-the-best-portal/
Can you tell me which emr has the best portal - and what does the emr company charge for you (the doctor) to use the portal?

I haven't seen much use of them - and I'm trying to figure out why.]]> Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:24:40 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/1158-the-best-portal/ http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/55-patient-involved-portals/ Patient-Centric Portals
Web portals that allow patients and physicians to communicate online have a firm foot in the door. "There's certainly evidence that organizations are investing more in portals," says David Ahern, national program director for Boston-based Health e-Technologies Initiative, the foundation arm of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J. "All the major players in healthcare have had an interest in portal development."
Patient-Centric Portals


This is an interesting article that inquires that if this technology saves money and increases patient quality of care it should very well be integrated into an EHR. On a very basic level of portals (unsecured email) I have found this saves me time on the phone. Patients are direct with their questions and I can be to the point in my relies as well. It would be nice if these emails automatically were part of their electronic medical record as opposed to my Outlook inbox. ]]> Sun, 15 May 2011 10:52:45 +0000 http://www.emrconsultant.com/forum/topic/55-patient-involved-portals/