The Meditab team will be at the ACAAI Annual Scientific Meeting this week, from November 7-11 in Baltimore at booth #201. Join the team as they highlight the new IMSGo™ mobile EHR app along with the AllergyEHR Shot Lab – a cloud-based stand-alone immunotherapy solution.

IMSGo™ includes mobile tools to manage billing, hospital rounds, tasks and patient check-in/out. The app also enables doctors to document certain parts of a clinical note by using speech recognition or recording to an audio file for transcription. Additionally, users have the ability to refill prescriptions and review lab results.

The AllergyEHR Shot Lab offers many features for increased productivity and streamlined workflows:
• Quickly document skin test results and define antigens, allergens and diluents from a single screen
• Efficiently measure and track patient reactions and all associated treatments
• Manage and track patients’ vials quickly and conveniently
• Populate recipes based on skin test results
• Easily set alerts and reminders specifically for critical reactions to keep patient care on track

This year’s meeting titled, New Frontiers in Allergy and Immunology: From Bench to Clinic, will offer an array of educational sessions and social events for physicians and health professionals. If you are attending, be sure to come by booth #201 and speak with the Meditab team.

Between work, children and a personal life, life as a parent can be hectic. To help keep track of infant and toddler care, EHRs and patient portals can help parents stay up-to-date with crucial vaccinations and check-ups. In a study by Kaiser Permanente that followed 7,000 children in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest, researchers found that EHRs and patient portals helped parents keep track of check-ups and follow medical care protocol even while their children were feeling well. This survey showed that parents in two distinct regions in the United States found patient portals to be beneficial and useful.

Specifically, the study found that 90 percent of parents in Hawaii who use EHRs to keep track of their child’s care attended all recommended checkups for infants. These recommended check-ups monitor the weight, height and mental development of a child, which can catch early diseases or mental delays that occur in early childhood. In the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, the study found that 82 percent of parents who use online patient portals took their children to the recommended doctor visits, compared to the 64 percent of offline parents.

Physicians and doctors encourage parents to use patient portals and EHRs to help manage their children’s care. With the increase of smartphones and mobile applications, they expect that this technology will become part of parents’ everyday life. Meditab offers a pediatric-specific module to assist physicians in providing the best possible care. For more information on Meditab’s pediatric EHR software, visit http://www.meditab.com/ehr-specialties/pediatric-ehr/.

Healthcare professionals and physicians have always tried to get patients to quit unhealthy behaviors including smoking, forgetting to fill prescriptions and eating poorly. However, now under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare, the transition to EHRs are forcing physicians to get creative. As the second phase of the $27 billion federal incentive program moves into motion, providers are faced with more challenges, as they must offer online access to health records to at least half of their patients on Medicare. In addition, 5 percent of those patients have to use the online services by entering their own data or sending messages back to the providers. If physicians fail to do so, they will not receive extra Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments.

Some physicians are worried about whether or not their patients will engage in the online portals and communication and feel that it is not fair to be judged on that participation. In order to try and get ahead of the situation, health providers are utilizing their social media outlets to promote their email address so patients can reach out to them about the transition and get answers to any questions they may have. However, many physicians are not seeing the level of response and engagement that they had hoped for.

Online communication can be a convenient alternative to office visits for chronic disease care or routine follow-ups. Telehealth and other online solutions can also help support aging in place – keeping older people in their own homes rather than in long-term care facilities, with the aid of monitoring technology. Ideally, patient portals will be platforms for collaboration and communication among providers, as well as between providers and their patients.

Physicians and providers must make sure they are communicating in an easy and understandable way otherwise patients will struggle with the medical jargon. The information also has to be presented in a concise way in a single consolidated hub, making it convenient for patients to access. The success of online provider-patient communication and the level of engagement truly comes down to whether or not patients see a value, so it’s up to providers to help them see it.

According to a survey recently conducted by Xerox, the majority of Americans are still confused about the transition from paper to digital electronic health records. After polling about 2,000 U.S. adults, Xerox found that only 29% of patients were told by their physicians that their medical records would be converted within the next year. While the majority of patients recognize a reduction in healthcare costs and an improvement of healthcare services as a positive impact of the paper to digital transition, even more (83%) patients still worry about digital issues, such as security. Nearly seven out of 10 do not want their medical records in a digital format.

In order to qualify for the federal Stage 2 meaningful use incentives, hospitals will have to incorporate the use of online portals. In addition, at least 5% of patients must be able to access their data online. Currently, only 19% of the 2,000 adults surveyed by Xerox are able to access their medical records online.

The implementation of patient portals is critical, as they allow patients to take a role in their own healthcare. These portals provide convenient access to information, such as a physician’s post-treatment instructions or a doctor’s directions for prescription medicine. Reminders and alerts are an added feature to this program. Since patient portals are available 24/7, providers can aid patients by providing access to educational information and labs at any time of the day. A time-saving factor is also beneficial to providers because they are able to gather information from patients prior to their appointment through an electronic questionnaire.

With the October 1, 2014 deadline ringing in the minds of healthcare providers and physicians alike, it’s important to be preparing now for the ICD-9 to ICD-10 transition. With this new code set, the largest financial system change will take place since the Prospective Payment System (PPS) in 1983. With less than 12 months to go, it’s crucial to take the steps necessary to ensure a smooth transition. Two methods for doing so include using real-world case scenarios for collaborative testing and the General Equivalence Mappings (GEMS).

The real-world case scenario is one methodology and uses real life hand-coded cases to test the healthcare’s ICD-10 trading partners. A central communication hub is used to share results and providers, payers and clearinghouses will test ICD-10 with the same set of cases to ensure a consistent measurement.

Highlights of asynchronous, or end-to-end testing on real-world scenarios include:
• Testing costs are reduced through the use of shared test cases
• Measure actual ICD-10 financial and operational impact
• Discover gaps to alter and perfect training programs

The second methodology is GEMS, which can be used for baseline mapping systems and ICD-10 testing. Many payers are using this system to establish their general financial impact. Although many healthcare providers claim they will be using GEMS for their ICD-10 testing, the transition might not be that easy, as more than 20 percent of Medicare codes in ICD-9 do not smoothly translate to ICD-10.

Keep in mind these 4 best-practice tips to begin end-to-end testing initiatives:
• Set up dual coding as the first step
• Share mapping methods with your payers as soon as possible
• Start testing as soon as possible and expand from there
• Join with regional and local peers to collaborate and fully understand the ICD-10 plan.

Meditab Software guarantees that IMS will be ICD-10 ready by February 15, 2014 and this is backed with a money-back policy.

According to statistics reported by the New York Times, each year, between 5 and 20 percent of the US population gets the flu. This means increased visits to the doctor, especially the pediatricians and family practitioners, as children are two to three times more likely than adults to get sick with the flu, and children frequently spread the virus to others, according to the CDC.

With patients scheduling an influx of appointments at this time, the office and paperwork can get a little hectic. But with Meditab Software’s certified EHR system, IMS Clinical, physicians and health professionals can prepare for the season and get ahead of the game. IMS Clinical enables users to stay organized and allows physicians to focus more of their time on the care of the patient.

Some benefits and features of IMS Clinical include:
• Instantly access a comprehensive linear view of the patient’s care
• Eliminate labor-intensive chart pulls and re-files
• Provide rapid responses to chart/record requests and audits
• Eliminate transcription costs
• Enhance the quality of care already being provided and better manage risk
• Easily access patient information with a single click across all IMS applications

Meditab Software is doing its part to make sure that IMS users are prepared for the upcoming ICD-10 transition via a series of weekly emails and webinars. If you haven’t had the chance to do your research, Meditab has outlined some helpful tips to get you started on the road to ICD-10 readiness:

1. Identify and plan to update all your systems to ICD-10 by making sure you understand your current systems and processes currently in use by ICD-9.
2. Communicate with your payers, clearinghouses and Meditab to determine their system readiness and ask questions about what they’re doing to prepare for the transition.
3. Ask your payers if there are any contractual changes regarding coding specificity that could affect how you process claims.
4. Document any potential workflow changes.
5. Determine the training needs of your staff and aim to plan accordingly. Your staff will require different specific pieces of education around ICD-10 coding.
6. Plan for added expenditures in time and resources as you work to prepare your practice and your staff for the transition period.
7. Test, Test, Test! Before the October 1, 2014 deadline, make sure to test your transaction submissions with your vendors, payers and clearinghouses to make sure everything is going smoothly.

If you have specific concerns about ICD-10, please contact icd-10info@meditab.com.

Meditab Software, developers of the #1-ranked EHR for Allergy and Immunology, is getting ready to showcase its cloud-based standalone immunotherapy solution – the AllergyEHR Shot Lab – and its recently launched IMSGo™ mobile EHR app at the ACAAI 70th Annual Scientific Meeting next month.

The ACAAI, which works to promote a standard of excellence in the field of allergy and immunology, will host its annual meeting in Baltimore from November 7-11, 2013. This year’s meeting titled, New Frontiers in Allergy and Immunology: From Bench to Clinic, will offer an array of educational sessions and social events for physicians and health professionals. If you’re there, make sure to come by the booth!

IMSGo™ includes mobile tools to manage billing, hospital rounds, tasks and patient check-in/out. The app also enables doctors to document parts of a clinical note by using speech recognition or recording to an audio file for transcription. Additionally, users have the ability to refill prescriptions and review lab results.

The Shot Lab, a centralized, all-inclusive skin-testing module, can be used as a stand-alone tool or as part of the complete AllergyEHR solution. The Shot Lab works with most other leading EHR systems to transform shot management into a user-friendly electronic format.

The AllergyEHR Shot Lab offers many features for increased productivity and streamlined workflows:
• Quickly document skin test results and define antigens, allergens and diluents from a single screen
• Efficiently measure and track patient reactions and all associated treatments
• Manage and track patients’ vials quickly and conveniently
• Populate recipes based on skin test results
• Easily set alerts and reminders specifically for critical reactions to keep patient care on track

For more information, visit www.meditab.com/ehr-specialties/allergy-ehr/

Medical Practices seeking an affordable, specialty-focused EHR packed Meditab Software’s booth at MGMA13 in San Diego. They watched demos of the popular IMS integrated EHR/Practice Management solution and were impressed by the user-friendly, customizable templates designed for their specialty.

A highlight of the three-day show was Meditab’s launch of the IMSGo mobile EHR app. Available for iPad, iPhone and Android devices, IMSGo lets users easily access appointment details such as patient name, procedure type, and duration of procedure by date and/or office; and patient demographics like photo, contact information, allergies, ICDs, notes, prescriptions, vitals and insurance information. You also can manage check-in/out and change offices, add notes, view demographics, assign rooms, change visit status, or record vitals. It also has the popular MyTasks feature to view document PDFs, visit note details, faxes, reminders, tasks, status, and labs ordered, to be ordered, received and reviewed. Physicians on the go can access visit notes with medications, labs, prescription refills, immunotherapy, and much more.

Until Oct. 31, 2013, current Meditab clients can take advantage of a limited time offer to get unlimited IMSGo mobile EHR access for free until 12/31/2013 (less a one-time setup fee of $500.) For details, email imsgo@meditab.com or call 510-632-8021 (ext: 23052 or ext: 24046).

The patient portal market will grow significantly over the next five years, according to Frost & Sullivan’s new analysis on the U.S. Patient Portal Market for Hospitals and Physicians: Overview and Outlook, 2012-2017.. The report attributes the growth primarily to the need to meet Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements, the growing move to clinical integration and accountable care, and increasing consumer demand for health IT. Revenue from patient portals is expected to rise from $279.8 million in 2012 to $898.4 million in 2017 – a 221.1 percent increase.

Forecasters predict that over the next few years, solutions will usher in the era of Patient Portal 2.0. Consumers can look forward to more robust functions such as health information exchange across diverse care settings, integration of clinical and financial data, dynamic scheduling, social networking, gaming, avatars for personalized health coaching and e-visits.

Currently, about half of U.S. hospitals and 40 percent of physicians in ambulatory practice possess some type of patient portal technology. Most were acquired as part of their electronic health record (EHR) or their practice management software. Patient portals are increasingly being relied upon for patient engagement such as access to medical records, communication with their doctors, education and wellness tracking.

Some of the more feature-rich patient portals like IMS CarePortal by Meditab Software give patients 24/7 access to appointment requests, prescription information / refill requests, secure messaging Tools, online bill pay, educational information, lab results, and much more. This saves clinical staff time and improves overall communication with patients while helping practices meet Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements.