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  The Health Record Review
by Frank Irving


EHR Business Notes

Posted on Tue, May 17, 2011 - 11:00 am

CDW Healthcare, part of the public sector subsidiary of CDW LLC, announced a partnership with meridianEMR, which provides an EHR for urologists. CDW Healthcare will be the preferred provider of IT infrastructure and services for meridianEMR solutions.

meridianEMR is an ONC-ATCB-certified EHR that supports the 2011/2012 criteria for Stage 1 Meaningful Use. As a result of the partnership, CDW Healthcare and meridianEMR will deliver all of the components required for a urology or general surgery practice to successfully make the transition to meaningful use at the lowest total cost to the physicians, the companies said.
meridianEMR noted that it has a user base of over 1,000 practicing urologists nationwide composed of a wide range of practice sizes.
“In specialties such as urology, the cost of reduced patient visits is significantly higher than in general medicine,” said Michael Custode, CEO of meridianEMR. “Our EHR products and services are designed specifically to support these specialists in making their practices more efficient and patient care more effective. The partnership will further this effort, bringing customized solutions to reduce the time and disruption associated with adoption.”
“EHR is not a technology solution, it is a fundamental business transformation that includes IT in addition to thorough training, workflow adjustment and management changes,” said Bob Rossi, vice president of CDW Healthcare. “Our objective is to make the technology the easiest part of the adoption process, freeing up physician and staff time to address the more pressing adoption issues.”
The two firms are demonstrating meridianEMR’s EHR solution, including technology from CDW Healthcare, at the American Urological Association’s annual meeting this week in Washington, D.C.
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On May 17, application provider Entrada released an updated platform giving clinics, hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers new options for helping physicians use EHRs more productively and for accelerating how providers document and share patient encounter data.
The company said its newest release includes several new capabilities:
ExpressNote allows physicians to input structured data into an EHR without being logged into the EHR. Using a standard PC or mobile device, physicians select a patient name from a list of appointments; the system then presents the EHR encounter fields that need to be populated.
ExpressCapture allows providers to dictate at desired points in the record by clicking on Entrada’s embedded recording tool.
ExpressSign enables physicians to view, edit, approve and sign their clinical documentation from any location using a web-enabled device such as a smartphone, iPad, or PC.
ExpressSign and ExpressCapture are included in the company’s new online portal, MyEntrada. It can be accessed securely by physicians, administrators, editors, coders or any other approved clinical reviewer, with information views determined by their respective roles.
ExpressShare flags physicians when edited files are available to review in their Entrada portal. The physician can view a document from any mobile or PC-based web browser, then electronically edit it, if necessary, and sign it. The completed note is automatically routed to the hospital or surgery center and back to the physician’s clinic for return into the patient’s record. This allows for automated document sharing, faster billing and improved revenue cycle management for providers and facilities, according to the company.
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Medsphere’s OpenVista EHR, version 1.5, received complete certification for inpatient settings and modular certification for ambulatory settings from InfoGard on May 4, 2011. According to InfoGard, this EHR Module is 2011/2012 compliant and has been certified in accordance with the applicable criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Medsphere said it is developing OpenVista for full EHR certification in ambulatory settings.
Photo by sskennel courtesy of Creative Commons license.