RE: seeking e-MDs patient portal experiences

[Guest guest]

,

We’re on e-MDs, but won’t

subscribe to the patient portal until billing information is available on it –

they say it will be in a future release. Right now, we use RelayHealth

for online appointment and rx requests, webvisits, lab results, etc.

e-MDs also says that they will have an integration through the portal in the

future for HPI. If either that or billing comes out in the next version

of the portal, we will consider adding that cost. But right now,

RelayHealth is free to us to use through our HMO IPA and is working just fine.

Regarding SureScripts, we like getting

refill requests that way. We’ve been live on SureScripts most of

this year and the providers actually prefer to just use the FAX because it is

faster unless they are only sending one rx. Refills are great, but the outgoing

rx’s have to go one at a time and it actually takes longer than to send a

FAX. On the plus side, the MA’s can go through the refill requests

and authorize refills per the MD’s protocol for refill requests. It

seems like it took 6-8 months before we were completely set up on

SureScripts. I started calling/emailing e-MDs on a regular basis and

bugging them. I know that they are way behind right now.

Good luck!

Pratt

Office Manager

Oak Tree Internal Medicine P.C

Roy Medical Associates, Inc.

From:

[mailto: ] On

Behalf Of neurologymp

Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008

10:27 AM

To:

Subject:

seeking e-MDs patient portal experiences

Is anyone using it? What do you think of it? What

works well, does not

work well? (An e-MDs first generation product scares me-- it has taken

them 7 months and they still haven't figured out how to get us

SureScripts) Is it worth the money? How difficult is set-up/

maintenance-- does it have tons of glitches?

I'd be really greatful for any feedback.

Thanks,

[Guest guest]

,

We’re on e-MDs, but won’t

subscribe to the patient portal until billing information is available on it –

they say it will be in a future release. Right now, we use RelayHealth

for online appointment and rx requests, webvisits, lab results, etc.

e-MDs also says that they will have an integration through the portal in the

future for HPI. If either that or billing comes out in the next version

of the portal, we will consider adding that cost. But right now,

RelayHealth is free to us to use through our HMO IPA and is working just fine.

Regarding SureScripts, we like getting

refill requests that way. We’ve been live on SureScripts most of

this year and the providers actually prefer to just use the FAX because it is

faster unless they are only sending one rx. Refills are great, but the outgoing

rx’s have to go one at a time and it actually takes longer than to send a

FAX. On the plus side, the MA’s can go through the refill requests

and authorize refills per the MD’s protocol for refill requests. It

seems like it took 6-8 months before we were completely set up on

SureScripts. I started calling/emailing e-MDs on a regular basis and

bugging them. I know that they are way behind right now.

Good luck!

Pratt

Office Manager

Oak Tree Internal Medicine P.C

Roy Medical Associates, Inc.

From:

[mailto: ] On

Behalf Of neurologymp

Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008

10:27 AM

To:

Subject:

seeking e-MDs patient portal experiences

Is anyone using it? What do you think of it? What

works well, does not

work well? (An e-MDs first generation product scares me-- it has taken

them 7 months and they still haven't figured out how to get us

SureScripts) Is it worth the money? How difficult is set-up/

maintenance-- does it have tons of glitches?

I'd be really greatful for any feedback.

Thanks,

[Guest guest]

I use eMDs and Surescripts and Portal.

is correct that the linking aspect is more a Surescripts issue than an eMDs issue. He is also correct that it takes away from the time savings, yet you only have to link any given medicine once so the amount of linking should go down over time. Your medical assistant, if you have one, can do the linking for you. I think I only get 25% of refill requests that need linking, but that is probably becasue my MA is doing half of them. It just means that Surescripts and eMDs both have to agree the prescription is identical.

For instance, another doctor prescribes diltiazem CD 180 daily for your patient. The patient requests the refill goes to you. Surescripts queries your database and finds diltiazem SR (not CD) 180 daily, and requires you to verify that the two are a match. It seems like overkill, but it is probably a good practice to verify they are the same. One has to believe that with software upgrades less linking will be required with time.

Even with the "linking" time trouble, I prefer surescripts to faxing. It takes your MA out of the equation, saving your personnel time. The MAs take fewer phone calls and receive fewer faxes (only to manually enter the refill requests) once surescripts is up and running. Getting it set up is a royal pain, all due to the eMDs side, but once it was up and running we have had no problems for 4 months or so.

Portal is raw but I like it. Every time you look in a chart you can tell if the patient is signed up for the portal or not. If they are, you can email them about anything, and vice versa, including sending them their lab results. Even with a back and forth, that takes me less time than a phone call. To be sure, it is the first release and I can see the growing pains. Our biggest problem is that if you enter their email address incorrectly, it is needlessly complexto fix it. Also, if the patient's spam filter catches your initial email with their "portal password", and the patient never opens it, then they won't receive your emails.

Those problems aside, it is clear to me that this is a natural evolution of patient/doctor communication, and I expect eMDs to improve this module with each Service Pack. I think it works pretty well for the first release, perhaps analagous to Windows 95.

> 2) The interface between the pharmacy/surescript s and e-mds is good, but a> lot of linking has to be done. So, when you receive a rxn request from the> pharmacy, you may have to first link it to a patient (if there is any> difference in the name of the patient from the pharmacy) and then you have> to link it to the right medication (because generics do not match up with> name brands). I can only imagine the linking will get better the more it is> used, but I would say about 40-50% of my incoming rxn requests need to be-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.synapsed irect.comSynapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

[Guest guest]

I use portal and surescripts. Both are great. Both are in early versions, so a little raw. But both are worthwhile even in their current forms. VPN setup with eMDs is the biggest pain, a known problem with eMDs. But once up, I've had few problems. The linking problem with surescripts is likely to improve with upgrades, hopefully requiring its use less often. Plus, your staff can do the linking. I prefer surescripts to faxing, especially on the request side, since it frees up your staff and fax machine.

We use portal primarily for giving lab results now, and non-urgent questions for the doctor or MA. Patients like it, I like it, I'd give it a B+. Basically every communication by portal eliminated one phone call, and possibly two. Can be used to allow patients to schedule their own appts, but we haven't tried that yet. If one of you wants to check it out, I'll give you a username and password and you can look at it.> 2) The interface between the pharmacy/surescript s and e-mds is good, but a> lot of linking has to be done. So, when you receive a rxn request from the> pharmacy, you may have to first link it to a patient (if there is any> difference in the name of the patient from the pharmacy) and then you have> to link it to the right medication (because generics do not match up with> name brands). I can only imagine the linking will get better the more it is> used, but I would say about 40-50% of my incoming rxn requests need to be-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.synapsed irect.comSynapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

[Guest guest]

I use portal and surescripts. Both are great. Both are in early versions, so a little raw. But both are worthwhile even in their current forms. VPN setup with eMDs is the biggest pain, a known problem with eMDs. But once up, I've had few problems. The linking problem with surescripts is likely to improve with upgrades, hopefully requiring its use less often. Plus, your staff can do the linking. I prefer surescripts to faxing, especially on the request side, since it frees up your staff and fax machine.

We use portal primarily for giving lab results now, and non-urgent questions for the doctor or MA. Patients like it, I like it, I'd give it a B+. Basically every communication by portal eliminated one phone call, and possibly two. Can be used to allow patients to schedule their own appts, but we haven't tried that yet. If one of you wants to check it out, I'll give you a username and password and you can look at it.> 2) The interface between the pharmacy/surescript s and e-mds is good, but a> lot of linking has to be done. So, when you receive a rxn request from the> pharmacy, you may have to first link it to a patient (if there is any> difference in the name of the patient from the pharmacy) and then you have> to link it to the right medication (because generics do not match up with> name brands). I can only imagine the linking will get better the more it is> used, but I would say about 40-50% of my incoming rxn requests need to be-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.synapsed irect.comSynapse - the use from anywhere EMR.

[Guest guest]

I use portal and surescripts. Both are great. Both are in early versions, so a little raw. But both are worthwhile even in their current forms. VPN setup with eMDs is the biggest pain, a known problem with eMDs. But once up, I've had few problems. The linking problem with surescripts is likely to improve with upgrades, hopefully requiring its use less often. Plus, your staff can do the linking. I prefer surescripts to faxing, especially on the request side, since it frees up your staff and fax machine.

We use portal primarily for giving lab results now, and non-urgent questions for the doctor or MA. Patients like it, I like it, I'd give it a B+. Basically every communication by portal eliminated one phone call, and possibly two. Can be used to allow patients to schedule their own appts, but we haven't tried that yet. If one of you wants to check it out, I'll give you a username and password and you can look at it.> 2) The interface between the pharmacy/surescript s and e-mds is good, but a> lot of linking has to be done. So, when you receive a rxn request from the> pharmacy, you may have to first link it to a patient (if there is any> difference in the name of the patient from the pharmacy) and then you have> to link it to the right medication (because generics do not match up with> name brands). I can only imagine the linking will get better the more it is> used, but I would say about 40-50% of my incoming rxn requests need to be-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.synapsed irect.comSynapse - the use from anywhere EMR.