Physical Therapy Products Recently Spoke With jim Plymale, ceo of Clinicient, Portland, Ore, About Recent Trends in Electronic Medical Records (emr).

What aspect of patient-record management is usually poorly handled?

Plymale: Many clinics lack the ability to turn information into action. Clinics are awash with data and reports, but these won’t tell you what you need to do to improve patient care, revenues, and profitability. The root cause is a lack of an integrated, well-defined information-gathering and reporting system that covers all aspects of day-to-day clinic management. In a clinic, information comes from patients, physicians, and payors. This data needs to be organized into a single, complete data record that’s instantly available to those who need it. A good system has built-in intelligence to recognize when information is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, and can alert staff to resolve issues long before they turn into problems.

For example, if a signed plan of care from the referring physician is needed to authorize treatment, the system should automatically alert the staff. Currently, with most systems, the staff may not be aware of a missing plan of care until the claim is denied.

How does the physical therapy field compare with other rehab professions in terms of using EMR?

Adoption of EMR systems has been slower due to the lack of a system specific to physical therapy. Traditional EMR and practice-management systems were created for doctors and institutions. They weren’t designed to handle specific needs that PT practices have, including the ability to schedule and document multiple, progressive visits; to handle the billing rules specific to rehabilitation; and to quickly develop documents for communicating with the referring physician.

Also, until recently, most EMR systems were too expensive to purchase and maintain. For this reason, the “on-demand” or hosted software approach will enable more clinics to adopt electronic practice-management systems.

In addition to investing in a software system, do PTs usually need to invest in new computer hardware as well? Please explain.

When investing in software, it’s common to purchase laptops or tablet PCs for therapists to use during patient encounters. Traditional EMR systems also require clinics to purchase expensive servers, as well as the additional security and networking infrastructure required for HIPAA compliance.

With the on-demand software approach, it’s not necessary to purchase and maintain large servers or invest in extra security. The additional benefit of a hosted solution is that it gives everyone secure anytime anywhere access to the information they need without the expense of maintaining a virtual private network. This is especially valuable to multi-site clinics and therapists who work in the field or want to access documentation from home.