Why Develop Custom Primary Care EMR/EHR: Consideration, Benefits, and Process

Custom primary care EMR/EHR systems in US healthcare offer several benefits. It focuses on the basic needs of healthcare practices. Other Standard EMR/EHR software in the market cannot meet clients’ specific requirements.

The software is made to improve the user experience and usability of the application. It allows healthcare providers to create informative dashboards for efficient documentation and clinical workflows.

It allows practices to utilize customizable templates for visit notes, patient records, assessments, notes, and patient education. This simplifies decision-making for providers and reduces manual work.

The interoperability feature allows providers to share patient records with other healthcare providers and access their complete medical history. It promotes scalability features, making it easier for healthcare practices to manage more patient information as the practice grows.

What are the drawbacks of current EMR software?

There are some drawbacks in current EMR software that need to be addressed. The main issue with current EMR software is its incapability to share patient information with other healthcare providers or systems. As a result, healthcare providers are unable to access a patient’s past medical history. Additionally, incomplete information is sometimes shared, making it challenging to accurately diagnose a patient.

EMRs store patient health information and face data leaks/breaches when exchanging it. This is a major challenge for EHRs to ensure data security. EMR/EHR software with more features has more cost, making it expensive for small healthcare practices, which is a big challenge.

How Custom EMR solution can solve existing EMR issues?

Customized EMR software solves the issues in current packaged EMR software, such as data security. The main challenge is to keep the patient’s health information secure when sharing it with other healthcare providers. One solution is to use HIPAA technical regulations. It has a feature that allows healthcare providers to share patient data, solving a big problem.

A Custom EMR solution can address existing EMR issues by tailoring workflows to the specific needs of a medical practice. Integration of the EMR system with existing processes helps to reduce disruption and improve overall efficiency in workflow. It enables the inclusion of specialty-specific templates, forms, and data fields, ensuring accurate and relevant documentation. Custom workflows enhance user experience, making it intuitive for healthcare professionals to navigate and input information.

Benefits of developing custom primary care practices EMR

• Increased level of productivity-

Customized primary care EMRs are designed in a way that they coordinate with the workflows of primary care practices. This results in the staff and healthcare providers navigating the system easily. As it helps in their daily operations, reduction of time results in increased productivity. Customized EMR software has templates that allow healthcare providers and staff to enter details quickly and save time. It allows secure communication between healthcare facilities, providers, and patients. This communication can be done through messaging, voice calls, and video calls. As a result, it speeds up the health treatment process.

• Facilitates the documentation process-

The software allows practices to create templates for recording specific patient information. Custom templates have fields and checkboxes to gather patient health info, saving time and reducing data entry errors. It offers customized education templates for patients to understand their disease and health conditions.

• Complete patient data-

Customized EMRs are designed to record all patient data. This includes filling in every detail of patient medical records during encounters with healthcare providers. Primary care providers can share patients’ medical records with other providers, pharmacies, and labs. This sharing of information helps gather a complete medical history for the patient.

• Enhanced and efficient billing-

The software helps billing by suggesting accurate diagnoses and procedural codes based on the treatment given to the patient. This ensures accurate billing and reduces claim denials. The software has built-in charges for diagnosis and procedural codes, ensuring accurate billing based on the codes. The customized EMR allows the biller to see the claim status and fix problems to prevent rejections.

Process of Custom Primary Care Software Development

The process of Custom primary care software development includes further steps-

• Requirement Gathering-

To develop custom primary care software, it is important to understand the needs of primary care practices. This includes requirements, clinical processes, and workflows. The primary care provider, administrative staff, and development team must work together to finish the requirements and define the project’s scope.

• Design-

The designer will create a user-friendly design for the patient and provider interface. It will be used by healthcare providers, staff, and patients. Designers ensure that the user interface is user-friendly and the software is easy to navigate.

• Coding/Development-

In this phase, developers develop the software as per the design recommendations. Create features such as patient registration, appointment scheduling, encounters, soap notes, billing, claim filing, etc. A Developer writes code for all the functionalities required for primary care practice.

• Testing-

In this phase, engineers test the application to make sure there are no bugs or loopholes in the software. Quality assurance engineers check that all functions work correctly. Also, ensure that the software follows HIPAA rules to prevent data leaks. In this phase, software performance is tested through stress, load, and responsive testing.

• Deployment-

The software is deployed on the client’s production server and checks the application is working as expected. If any bug is found in the software, then it will be fixed immediately. After installing the application on the client’s server, the development company offers maintenance for any bugs or issues that may occur.

Challenges in developing custom primary care EMR software

Multiple challenges, such as interoperability, arise while developing custom primary care EMR software. Primary care software must be able to share patient medical records with other healthcare facilities, like providers, labs, and pharmacies. Interchanging data with other healthcare providers and gathering complete data is a challenge.

Keeping patient health information secure is a big challenge because it is sensitive and stored in the software. It can be misused if breached to avoid this software designed as per the HIPAA regulations. The primary care provider and staff may struggle with shifting to the new primary care EMR software. This is because they are habitual to the old software and resist change.

The software needs to handle a large amount of patient data. Creating and maintaining customized software for primary care practices can be costly.

Why choose Thinkitive to develop custom primary care EMR software

We at Thinkitive provide a customizable primary care EMR software solution. We have been in the healthcare IT services industry for 9+ years. The software has several features. These features include secure online communication between patients and providers. It also has a dashboard for analyzing data. The software also includes appointment scheduling and availability management. It has e-prescriptions, patient education, communication management, and patient charting for clinical and financial purposes.

The Features of Primary Care Software-

• secure online patient-provider communication-

We offer secure online communication between patients and providers in our customized primary care software, following HIPAA rules.

• Instant appointment booking-

This software allows healthcare providers and staff to schedule appointments for patients and specialists quickly. As the specialist has set the availability, the available providers for the specific time slot will appear. The instant appointment will be scheduled by selecting the provider, time, and date.

• Availability Management-

This software allows healthcare providers to manage their available time slots. Patients and healthcare staff can schedule appointments based on the date.

• Patient Charting-

We offer medical charts for providers to see patient medical information, helping them make more accurate diagnoses. Patient charting includes clinical information, such as demographics, vitals, symptoms, allergies, and medications.

• SOAP notes-

The providers can customize the soap notes as per their specialty or convenience. During the encounter, the provider enters patient details such as subjective, objective, assessment, and plan notes. If healthcare staff takes notes, the software will automatically fill in details. This helps providers assess diagnoses and spend more time with patients.

• Security-

We develop software that follows HIPAA rules to protect patient health information while sharing medical records with other healthcare providers.

Frequently Asked Questions