Lessons to meet the challenges of COVID-19 in 2022 and beyond
Despite everyone’s hopes — and the efforts and sacrifices of vaccine makers, public health authorities, and the general public — 2021 is ending much as it began, with continued disruption and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The good news is that businesses and individuals — including medical practices and their patients — now know what steps they need to take to minimize the risks of contracting coronavirus.
Better yet, eClinicalWorks® offers practices of all types and sizes the practical solutions that can enable them to largely return to their normal daily routines.
Healthcare can’t wait — and doesn’t have to
One of the enduring lessons of this pandemic has been that putting off routine care because of concerns over COVID-19 has led to an uptick in undiagnosed conditions that may pose as great or greater a threat to an individual’s health.
Neither medical practices nor their patients can afford to postpone care. And the stories of several eClinicalWorks practices that we featured during 2021 show that the tools needed to keep healthcare on track are already available.
These practices’ stories illustrate how eClinicalWorks:
Makes sense of the wealth of available patient data to guide effective healthcare.
Facilitates COVID-19 testing so that regular seasonal routines — such as summer camp attendance — can proceed with a minimum of disruption.
Captures each patient’s care history so that providers have the data they need to make more effective decisions at the point of care.
Audits home healthcare to avoid overlooking patients, duplication of care, mistakes, and cost overruns.
Gives practices a browser version so that critical patient background information is available in a timely fashion for operations.
Great analytics drive great care
Innova Primary Care of Huntsville, Alabama, is a small, independent primary care group that has used Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) coding, Chronic Care Management tools, and the eClinicalWorks Business Optimizer® (eBO) to closely monitor the performance of physicians.
“At the end of the day, that benchmark that we can extract in a timely manner directly out of eClinicalWorks is invaluable compared to finding out in 18 months, well our risk coding wasn’t good,” said David Uptagrafft, CFO and Director of Healthcare Experience. “We can address that and examine it and fix it.”
Saving summer from COVID-19
MedRite, an urgent care practice with locations in New York, New Jersey, and Florida, was approached by summer camps that needed rapid COVID-19 testing for as many as 300 people a day, including campers and staff.
By using eClinicalWorks’ tools for preregistration, demographics, contactless check-in, and Patient Portal, MedRite enabled the camps to open safely, conduct mass COVID-19 testing, and operate normally.
When history is missing, it’s PRISMA to the rescue
Once Carolina Heart and Leg Center began using PRISMA — the health information search engine — they immediately recognized the benefits of bringing together complete patient records from healthcare facilities across the country.
Trish Hayes, Carolina’s practice manager, tells us the day one of her providers saw 12 patients with incomplete records or no records at all. In every case, PRISMA was able to gather relevant patient history and organize that information so that the providers could proceed with an exam and treatment.
Effective tracking for home healthcare
Florida’s MMR Healthcare used to shuffle reams of paper in a struggle to track what was going on with home healthcare usage. Now, with the Care Planning Oversight (CPO) module from eClinicalWorks, the practice can track usage, avoid missing or duplicating services, better control costs, and hold home health agencies accountable.
“It has really changed the way workflow happens in my office,” said Martha M. Rodriguez, CEO and owner. “Now, with recording the patient from day one on the module, we really can follow very closely what’s happening.”
The difference the browser version can make
For Potomac Urology, switching to the browser version of eClinicalWorks has meant access to patients’ charts in real time.
“For example, I had nine surgeries scheduled, and pulling up the eClinicalWorks web browser on the computer in the operating room allowed me to always review every patient chart there in real time,” said Dr. Nilay M. Gandhi. “It’s been a big game-changer for us just in terms of how we access our data, but I believe it’s also been a significant improvement in our patient care.”
Schedule a one-on-one consultation today to learn how your practice can succeed in 2022.
