Having written about EMR and EHR software for 15 years, Healthcare IT Today’s John Lynn, just wrapped up an interview with AdvancedMD VP and Head of Product Tim Costantino to learn what changes are happening to the ambulatory EHR market and what efforts AdvancedMD is taking.
“It’s amazing to think how far we’ve come,” stated Lynn. “When I first started writing about EMR software, we were also talking about putting high speed internet and Wi-Fi into the office as well. Then, the HITECH Act provided $36 billion of stimulus money and required EHR certification. In many ways these certifications gave physicians the impression that all EHRs are the same. While this may be true from a certification standpoint, from a usability and feature standpoint, it couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The goal of the interview was to learn what doctors expect out of their EHR. “EHR with better, more intuitive workflow,” was Costantino’s immediate response. “Many doctors need to be a 24/7 doctor and need to access their EHR in off hours. An example of a bad workflow is having to remote desktop into your computer in the office to access your EHR. Even worse, some doctors are still driving into the office to access their EHR. A better workflow is a unified solution that’s in the cloud and available on mobile. This way a doctor can quickly get access to the information they need to better serve patients at any time and in any place.”
