Whatever follow-up steps are taken can then be permanently documented and, if appropriate, faxed to the PCP to show completion.
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IM Practice Manager 1.0 (Ingenious Med, Inc.)
This overall system includes clinical rounding, charge capture, communication, and business intelligence suites. Ingenious Med can aggregate data across multiple facilities, integrating with hospital EMR, information, and billing systems, enabling real-time management reports, allowing physicians to enter and access data via the Internet or mobile devices, and promoting rapid dissemination of critical information across hospital and national physician networks.
“Customers typically start off with our basic product, which is comprehensive. As the practice matures, that’s where we get customers asking for other modules,” says Steven Liu, MD, founder, CEO, chief architect, and a practicing hospitalist at Emory Eastside Medical Center, Snellville, Ga. “Our suite of products is within Practice Manager. It’s designed primarily for physician practices, which is a little different than those designed for a hospital.”
As the name implies IM Practice Manager includes tools for the practice. “As the hospitalist movement has become a bigger player, hospitalists need to prove their value,” says Dr. Liu. “We provide tools for data-mining performance. These are modeled a lot on SHM and what they state as best requirements, as well as what the individual [hospital medicine practice] requires.”
Dr. Liu stresses that they only include the features that hospitalists really need to do their jobs: “This software is designed by physicians; we don’t do technology for technology’s sake.”
IM Practice Manager offers tools for both the administrators and the hospitalists in a given group. “On the business end, business intelligence is a very important part of any practice,” says Dr. Liu. “We’ve put a lot of resources into creating a comprehensive system. Other utilities are more geared to individual physicians.”
Those utilities include communications: “You can send e-mails as long as they’re within the practice,” says Dr. Liu. “This is secure and controllable. But the system is built to help hospital medicine groups to communicate with everyone they encounter—staff, the back office, patients, and other providers.”
MedAptus Point-of-Care Solution Suite (MedAptus, Inc.)
As with its competitors, MedAptus points to the improved coding compliance, decreased administrative burden, and greatly enhanced reimbursement that result from their electronic charge capture suite.
“We send out compliance or maintenance releases annually, and a real-time call goes out over the Web when new rules are issued,” explains Dr. Delaney. The result is an automatic update for users. “It all happens behind the scenes.”
Other software features target physicians’ daily activities. “The crucial thing is to get it right from the hospitalist’s perspective,” says Dr. Delaney. “Hospital medicine differs a lot [from other physician specialties]. It tends to practices sharing groups of patients, so we have rounding lists of patients built in. Your colleague can pull up a team of patients to see changes and updates to care.”
On dictation, a feature that not all systems offer, Dr. Delaney explains, “If they’re dictating today, this is a tremendous help. It’s seamlessly integrated into the system. However, if they’re currently writing notes, this is a convenient feature, but it’s also a new expense and can add to turnaround time.”
Another feature of MedAptus—one that is unique to its product—is the Clinical Content application, which connects the user to current medical knowledge in books and publications—pre-selected by the customer group—at any point in patient interaction. “We’re very excited about this,” says Dr. Delaney. “It allows just-in-time information on specific clinical questions. It takes you to the exact information you need at any point in the process.”