When it comes to choosing electronic health record (EHR) vendors for your medical practice, there are certain standards you should look for, including accessibility, reliability and usability. There are many benefits that come with implementing EHR, but when it comes to choosing the right vendor for your practice, you have many options to consider. Here’s a list of five of the most popular EHR vendors among healthcare professionals.
1. EpicCare
EpicCare is an EHR software that is manufactured under the parent company Epic Systems Corporation. Epic is currently a tremendous competitor in the healthcare information technology industry. As of March 2015, they make up more than 20% of the market share. Although Epic EHR systems has a good reputation, it’s one of the most expensive on the market. They primarily service the nation’s largest and most prestigious healthcare facilities, such as Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, UCLA Health in Los Angeles and Duke University Health System in Raleigh, N.C. Epic EHR systems and applications are developed, implemented and supported in-house, unlike some other organizations that host third party software applications. If you run a large medical practice, EpicCare is your best bet.
GE Healthcare’s Centricity Practice Solution is just one of many branches of the General Electric brand. GE Centricity is a large company that focuses on serving hospitals and private practices. The system is certified according to national regulations in order to keep your patient and practice information secured and organized. The software’s EHR sharing capabilities with outside facilities and physician referrals give your patients the best comprehensive care. With a dynamic search engine and one-click problem entry, Centricity Practice Solution simplifies the data entry required for medical providers to comply with new ICD-10 coding requirements and reduces the number of clicks required to enter a problem. The customizable features are tailored to boost your practice’s efficiency and meet your specific needs.
This software is known to have superior customer satisfaction and usability ratings, and is consistently rated for being easy to use and easy to navigate through patient charts. It’s a very user-friendly program which is ideal for smaller practices with fewer employees. Known for being practical and able to handle complex functions, this software is designed for anyone to use. It interacts well with other devices, such as copiers and telephones, does a fantastic job handling growth, and continues to innovate to stay ahead of rapid changes in the healthcare industry.
4. athenahealth
Athenahealth offers a web-based EHR software called athenaClinicals for practices of all sizes. Regular updates keep the software and your practice up to date with current trends and the customizable platform is a powerful option to consider for both new practices and already established facilities. This is one of the more expensive options for EHR software systems, but its customization features have excellent reviews from users. The software organizes all your daily tasks into a condensed dashboard alongside a daily appointment overview. Your patients have access to a web-based patient portal with several features that enable them to participate in their own health care. Patients can request appointments through the portal as well as set up reminders or communicate directly with your practice with secure, HIPAA-compliant messaging. You also have the option to manually enter information into the system or by using Entrada, which is a voice recognition software. While this voice-recognition technology is a separate option, but it’s built to be compatible directly with athenaClinicals.
5. Cerner
This EHR system also includes a detailed scheduling dashboard where your staff can quickly view information about a scheduled appointment, such as who is checked in and the patient’s reason for the appointment. You can then immediately jump into the patient’s chart from the dashboard. Over the past several years, Cerner has developed into a powerhouse company. They’ve acquired multiple organizations, such as workforce management software vendor Clairvia, behavioral health technology vendor Anasazi Software and patient engagement software vendor PureWellness.
While these recommendations are just a brief overview of popular EHR vendors, further personal research is advised before deciding which electronic health record is best for your practice. Along with having EHR software to organize patient records and keep structure within your organization, it’s also crucial to backup all your EHR and business files. Offsite, online backup is the only way to ensure your electronic health records and pertinent business files are safe, secure and protected from any threat.
Backup software serves to safeguard all your records against human error, natural disaster, viruses, hardware failure and other destructive occurrences. Even if local servers crash or fail, you can still retrieve the offsite backed up data quickly and efficiently. A good backup service will be automatic and continuous, meaning your employees can keep working uninterrupted while the software backs up the data.
