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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Free EMRs to Bail Out US Healthcare

Filed under: Informatics

Kevin, M.D. has an opinion piece in the USA Today blog giving a quick synopsis of why only 13% of doctors have adopted electronic medical records for their practices. The major reason seems to be the high cost for both software and hardware necessary to implement EMR in individual clinics and offices. The numbers presented are staggering, and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson believes the government should be paying the bill. We're fairly skeptical of the state being in the business of building EMRs, but perhaps there's a solution that doesn't have to be political?

PracticeFusion, for example, offers a free EMR service that is hosted online and requires no additional infrastructure, nor expensive IT people to support it. It might not be the answer for everyone (on the other hand, maybe it is!), but the fact is that a lot of software is free and is being practically used in a host of industries. Having found success with the initial release, PracticeFusion this week will be making available version 2.0 of its EMR suite (shown below). Ryan Howard, CEO of PracticeFusion, tells Medgadget that the new EMR version is based on Adobe's Flash technology, and it includes features for patient demographic, diagnosis and medication management, vital gathering, SOAP note creation, along with integrated video-based training. In addition, Practice Fusion supports Mozilla Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome and Apple/Mac Safari 3 browsers.


According to Mr. Howard, PracticeFusion is now being used in 45 states, by nearly 2,000 users, and it is one of the fastest growing EMR communities in the US. Our hope is that PracticeFusion succeeds and creates a viable model that avoids yet more bureaucracy and the associated costs related to having the government run things.

More from Kevin, M.D. in USA Today...

PracticeFusion...

Flashback: Practice Fusion Wants to Disrupt EMR Market

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replies: 4 comments
Open comments are not moderated, although abusive and vulgar remarks may be deleted. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Medgadget.com. Please consult our disclaimer.

what you want to know -
is if the company fails, how dow you get your info; also the time to learn and input is not free, so if the company disappears you would want a guarantee that you have access to the code to keep it working in your office. They could say that if they go out of business, the code goes open source and published.

I always have trouble with the captchas


Posted by: techgeek
on October 2, 2008 04:01 AM GMT

That's a good question, but the reality is that it could happen in with any company. Based on their growth, I would be more concerned about traditional companies who haven't changed their model (Allscripts and NextGen) going out of business.


Posted by: Jonathan
on October 2, 2008 12:07 PM GMT

I heard that the government is trying take the VA EMR system (one of the few good things about the VA) and make it available for small practices. Since it was developed by the government, the source code is available to FOIA requests, so basically it is "open source". If enough people adopt it, then service companies will spring up to provide service.


Posted by: Temujim
on October 3, 2008 09:16 AM GMT

I stumbled upon Practice Fusion today while looking for an inexpensive EMR program. My sister is frantically trying to recover all of her files after her computer went down in her practice. As a new practice I can not afford nor do I need a system requiring 10's of thousands of dollars to get running. The government should be concerned with standardizing the insurance claims more than the billing or management programs. I am excited about the potential of practice fusion.


Posted by: MyBaclCracker
on October 3, 2008 11:04 AM GMT

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