EHR and Health IT Consulting

Dear Santa,

I’ve been a very good doctor all year. I have checked all my boxes and aced all my Meaningful Use requirements. This year, I’m not asking you for anything fancy. I just thought you might be able to instill some kindness and good will into the people who designed the user interface of my EMR. Maybe, with your help, they would come to see how a few minor tweaks could make the practice of medicine safer and more efficient, and my day a lot more enjoyable than it already is:

1) I wish I could see a routine laboratory panel, like a CBC or a CMP, in one view without scrolling inside a miniature window. That would save time and help me not miss abnormal results.

2) I wish the patient’s next appointment date was displayed next to any incoming report I have to review. That would help me decide if I need to contact the patient about the results or if I’m seeing them soon enough that I can talk about the report then.

3) I wish I could split my computer screen so I could see an X-ray or consultation report or a hospital discharge summary at the same time as I type or dictate the narrative of my office note. That would help me quote them correctly.

4) I wish, when I open a patient’s actual visit note for today, the place where I do my documentation, that I could automatically see at least the beginning of the latest of every category of information we have received – latest labs, X-rays, outside reports and phone calls. It takes too much time to go searching in the places for each category separately just in case there might be something recent to catch up on in the visit.

5) I wish my EMR would know that prn medications, such as nitroglycerin, are not meant to be used for only a limited time, like 30 or 90 days, and would agree to e-prescribe them without a “duration”. If I could do that, they would not disappear from the medication list all the time.

6) I wish my EMR would automatically display the patient’s kidney function and allergies next to where I pick what medications to prescribe. That would make prescribing quicker and safer.

7) I wish my EMR wouldn’t alert me to drug warnings and interactions that are too obvious to need reminders for. I mean, any doctor would know that adding a second diabetes pill can cause low blood sugar (that’s why we do it) and that combining two drugs that can cause fatigue may cause even more fatigue! More intelligent warnings would be taken more seriously; now my trackball finger is automatically poised to close the “warning” pop-up, because I’m expecting it to be irrelevant.

I’m sure if I tried, I could think of an even ten wishes, or maybe even twelve – one for each day of Christmas. But these seven things illustrate the underlying, fundamental wish I have: that my EMR will evolve to be more user friendly. I wish, now that the basic functionalities of EMRs are in place, that somebody comes back to people like me and asks how to take this thing to the next level.

The coming year will be the last for the EHR Incentive Programs as a result of no longer proving valuable to eligible hospitals and professionals, according to DirectTrust.

The non-profit association with the mission to support health information exchange and interoperability made the claim as one of its six predictions for 2016.

"Having accomplished the significant goals of greatly expanded EHR adoption and baseline interoperability via Direct, but also having alienated almost the entire health care provider community by overreaching for the final, Stage 3 version of its regulations, the Meaningful Use programs will be phased out by the end of 2016," the organization maintained in a public statement. "Providers are particularly worried because the requirements of Stage 3 MU do not align well with MIPS and MACRA, the new rules under which Medicare will pay for value and performance, rather than for volume of care."

DirectTrust sees things playing one of two ways.

"It may occur as a result of massive defections by providers willing to face fee schedule penalties rather than spend more resources on health IT that doesn’t add value to their practices and hospitals, it continued. "Or, it may happen as a result of Congressional action, or because CMS and ONC see the hand-writing on the wall and scale down and bow out gracefully."

The organization's prediction echoes the sentiments of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO John D. Halamka, MD, MS, who less than a month ago asserted that meaningful use had served its purpose and ought to give way to Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).

Similarly, both DirectTrust and Halamka consider the lofty aims of Stage 3 Meaningful Use are sufficient cause for moving away from the federal program.

Elsewhere in its health IT predictions for 2016, DirectTrust expects patients to take on a more significant role in ensuring the electronic exchange of their health data:

Patients will have greater access to their clinical records, and they will be able to more freely and easily move those records whenever and to whomever they choose. Health care consumers will take as their right control of their own health information in much greater numbers. The corresponding willingness of provider organizations to permit this patient engagement — and to view it as positive and productive to attaining better health outcomes — will also become more evident across the U.S.

The consequence will be a freeing of data and an increased focus on patient-facing applications although it may not go as smoothly as desired.

"This will not happen linearly; rather it will grow explosively, and then suffer hiccups and setbacks as the privacy and security risks of such systems are first exposed, and then dealt with. But it is going to happen," the group added.

This is likely to tie in with another of its predictions — the coming to the fore of health data security and privacy in 2016.

"The cost of data breaches in health care is simply too high to be tolerated," DirectTrust stated. "As use of electronic health information exchange soars, we will experience a corresponding rise in concern about and actions taken to mitigate the risks of exposure of both data at rest and data in transit. Parties involved in electronic data exchanges will insist on more and more rigorous certification, accreditation, and audit of security and identity controls as a first condition of participating in data sharing."

In its remaining predictions, the organization anticipates a movement toward greater interoperability on the part of federal and state agencies as well as a growing reliance on Direct exchange for enabling the secure and interoperable movement of health data between and among providers for the purposes of care coordination.

Different EHR vendors perform better in various different countries, according to a new KLAS Global Performance Report.

Despite having distinct popularity and success throughout the United States, Epic Systems is not necessarily the top-performing EHR product throughout the globe, according to a recent KLAS report.

The KLAS Global Performance report breaks down user-perceptions of various different EHR systems by region, such as Asia/Oceania, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America. Results show that although Epic Systems receives high praise throughout the US, and also performs well in Europe, the vendor does not have a stronghold in other regions.

The the best vendor performances in multiple regions, in fact, belonged to Cerner and Intersystems with high performances in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

One of the significant barriers vendors face in implementing their systems abroad are state contracts which limit certain functionality. Several companies, such as Cerner and Intersystems, have trouble implementing in Australia due to contractual issues.

Cerner’s implementation in the UK serves as an example of EHR systems that can be successfully implemented provided full adoption and fewer contractual limitations.

Although Epic is not seeing solid performances or high adoption rates in all regions, it is seeing success at larger health systems in other countries. Of the seven international Epic users interviewed, all of them reported full adoption of the systems, and strong functionality and support.

Vendors that do not see success at larger health systems include Allscripts and Phillips. Allscripts users report complications with implementation and support, while Phillips states that it faces difficulty garnering larger users to adopt their systems.

Cerner has garnered the most success throughout Europe, with the most ubiquitous successful adoption throughout the entire continent. That said, Epic has nearly 100 percent approval ratings from European users, though they are almost entirely located in one nation (the Netherlands).

As previously stated, Cerner’s clients in Australia are having difficulty with implementation. This is because of the way in which user contracts are established. Reported issues include a need for increased functionality, more system training, and increased systems optimization.

Despite Epic’s inconsistent international ratings, the EHR vendor continues to prove successful in the US. Between Epic’s many users’ awards, as well as Epic’s own honors, the vendor maintains its foothold as a health IT giant.

At the start of this year, Epic was awarded KLAS’s “Best in KLAS” award. Specifically, Epic won out in the Best for large ambulatory management category, among eleven other product awards.

Additionally, Epic won out in a recent Peer60 study of the physician-ranked most innovative EHR systems. Among the C-suite executives surveyed in the study, Epic won out as the overall best EHR system in operation. The vendor was also selected as one of the most intuitive and easy-to-use models on the market, and the top choice for CIOs.

Cerner and its users were also successful in the US this year, receiving KLAS’s best small ambulatory EHR award for 2014. Cerner also received two other KLAS awards in 2014.

In the aforementioned Peer60 study, Cerner was ranked as one of the most intuitive models on the market, as well as a top choice for COOs.

Perhaps most notably, Cerner was recently selected as the choice EHR for the Department of Defense EHR modernization project in partnership with Leidos Partnership for Defense Health. The partnership, which is currently valued at approximately $9 billion, was a significant feat for the EHR vendor.

“The Leidos Partnership for Defense Health is honored to have partnered with the Military Health System for nearly three decades, and we are committed to continuing our work in support of its mission to improve the health and medical readiness of our military,” Leidos representatives said in a public statement. “Our team stands ready to lean forward with the DoD to implement a world class electronic health records system.”

October 1 has come and gone, and nearly two weeks in to ICD-10 compliance most of the healthcare industry is relatively mum on the transition to the newer clinical diagnostic and procedural code set. More than likely, healthcare organizations and professionals are busy enough adapting to ICD-10 and its more specific set of codes.

That’s not to say some are not speaking out or in support of ICD-10 compliance.

Two recent weekend reports in the Florida’s Crestview News Bulletin and Maine’s Bangor Daily News paint two very different pictures of ICD-10 compliance at the two-week mark.

Apparently, some physician practices in the Florida panhandle are going through the motions in adapting to the federal mandate for ICD-10 compliance which began back on October 1. Brian Hughes reports that medical offices are encountering difficulties with the code set.

“Large practices and medical companies, such as Peoples’ Home Health, usually have coders on staff. Their only job is to enter the numbers into billing records and insurance reimbursement forms,” he writes. “For smaller offices like Dr. Herf’s and Mir’s, the increased coding tasks take away staffers’ time with patients.”

Betty Jordan, the manager of physician practice of Abdul Mir, MD, views ICD-10 as more of a hindrance than a help.

“It requires so much extra work. If my doctor treated someone for rheumatoid arthritis, there’s hundreds of codes. It’s got to be specific,” she told the Crestview News Bulletin.

“It is horrible for a primary care doctor,” she further revealed. “For a specialist, they deal with the same things over and over. For us in family practice, we see all kinds of things. It’s overwhelming.”

For an administrator at the practice of David Herf, MD, the challenge of ICD-10 compliance is the result of increased specificity being married to an increase amount detail.

“It’s really, really detailed,” Andrew Linares told the news outlet. “Instead of just saying, ‘cyst of the arm or trunk,’ you have to get really specific.”

For one of the physician practices, adapting to ICD-10 is akin to learning a whole new language.

The climate in Maine appears much sunnier regarding ICD-10 compliance. Jen Lynds reports high levels of preparation among Maine healthcare organizations and professionals leading to a smooth transition.

“Health care providers across the state began working Oct. 1 with a new system of medical codes that has them describing illnesses and injuries in more detail than ever before, and officials from hospitals and medical associations said earlier this week that they are prepared for the challenge,” she writes.

According to Gordon H. Smith, the Executive Vice President of the Maine Medical Association, complaints are scarce as are ICD-10 implementation delays. Director of Communications for the Maine Hospital Association reports the same situation.

That being said, leadership at Eastern Maine Medical Center are preparing for transition-related productivity decreases for coders and billers used to the previous code set. However, things are still proceeding as planned.

“Our transition to ICD-10 has gone very smoothly here at Eastern Maine Medical Center,” Director of Coding and Clinical Documentation Improvement Mandy Reid told the Bangor Daily News. “We are using nine contract coders through outside vendors to support the ICD-10 go-live, and we secured them several months ago to be prepared. We also have added three positions in the outpatient area to help support growing volume, as well as ICD-10 coding.”

The lesson learned so far is that a clinical practice’s ability to invest in ICD-10 preparation (e.g., training) correlates to its present-day confidence in ICD-10 compliance.

Throughout my HIM career, I have seen many different methods of capturing clinical documentation. We are always looking for solutions to get accurate and complete clinical documentation into the medical record in a timely manner with minimal disruption to the provision of care. The processes for gathering documentation have evolved with advances in technology and HIM professionals have been very involved in ensuring the quality of the documentation.

When I first began working in an HIM department, we had a Transcription department with hospital-employed transcriptionists and a management team devoted to medical transcription. Quality reviews were performed regularly and the transcriptionists had an ongoing relationship with the physicians to provide feedback and get clarifications. As part of this department, there were file clerks in charge of filing the transcribed documents onto the paper medical records throughout the day and into the night. When I think back on these practices, it seems like an entirely different lifetime from today’s practices yet it really wasn’t that long ago.

Over time, transcriptionists began to disappear from hospitals as the task became outsourced. Vendors have offered to do the job for less cost and they guaranteed a high quality rating of the transcribed reports. However, transcribed reports often still come back to the medical record with blanks and anomalies that must be corrected by the dictating clinician which can delay the documentation reaching the chart. It’s important to review documents to make sure there are no obvious errors that may have been misinterpreted by the transcriptionist or the back-end speech recognition system.

Many are still relying on outsourced transcription as a major source of capturing documentation but this is evolving as EHRs have created new opportunities for documentation. EHRs provide documentation tools such as templates to import data into the notes and allow for partial dictation for the narrative description. The negative side of this is that copy and paste is used frequently due to the ease of grabbing documentation from the rest of the EHR and pasting it into the note to save time. Clinicians using copy and paste may not realize that the information could be outdated or it could be against company policies. This now requires quality reviews to monitor the use of copy and paste and the relevance of the documentation to maintain the integrity of the medical record. This should be incorporated into chart audits or other quality review processes.

Front-end speech recognition tools are popping up frequently as an additional tool to capture documentation. A concern with this is the shift from having quality reviews performed by the transcriptionist to now relying on the clinicians to edit their documentation as they dictate. Many are creating positions in HIM departments to perform quality reviews on the documentation to not only ensure the documentation is in the record in the adequate timeframe but making sure the documentation is accurate for each patient. It will be interesting to see how clinical documentation continues to evolve as new methods of capturing documentation are developed and deployed. No matter how the information gets into the medical record, HIM professionals still have the ultimate responsibility to ensure the quality of the documentation for patient care and appropriate reimbursement.

As the waiting game for the Stage 3 Meaningful Use final rule and Stage 2 modification rule continues, the American Medical Association (AMA) is calling on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to start taking actions to account for their delay. According to a recent press release, AMA is asking CMS to make an automatic hardship exemption due to the delay in the final rule’s release.

According to AMA President Steven J. Stack, MD, many physicians with the AMA are concerned that they will not be able to meet meaningful use standards because the details of the Stage 2 modification rule have not yet been released.

“The AMA has regularly stressed that CMS must finalize Meaningful Use modifications well ahead of Oct. 1 to provide the time that physicians need to plan for and accommodate these changes, yet CMS has continued to delay finalizing this rule,” says Stack. “As a result, many physicians who were counting on this flexibility will be subject to financial penalties under the rules currently in place.”

An automatic hardship exemption would exempt providers of financial penalties if they are not able to meet certain meaningful use standards. CMS developed hardship exemptions for providers who can demonstrate that adhering to meaningful use rules would cause a considerable hardship. AMA maintains that the considerable delay in the final rule is viable cause for an automatic hardship exemption.

The AMA is not the only organization expressing distress over the meaningful use final rule. Many entities, such as the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) are calling on CMS to extend the meaningful use reporting period due to the delayed final rule.

The organization is concerned that medical groups will not have time to report for the final 2015 reporting period if not given adequate notice of the new EHR Incentive Program modifications.

MGMA stated that even if the modifications rule had been announced in early September, providers still would not have had adequate time to adjust workflows for the final reporting period beginning on October 3. Instead, MGMA suggested CMS extend the reporting period to either the first 90 days of 2016, or the final 90 days of 2015.

Other entities, such as the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), have simply urged CMS to release the modification final rule sooner. CHIME, in addition to several other co-signing industry stakeholders, states that CMS withholding the final rule is preventing providers from having adequate time to prepare to the program modifications.

CHIME reiterated that many industry stakeholders commend CMS’ efforts to refocus meaningful use standards, but feels as though inadequate time is being given to providers to make their own adjustments in time for the October 3 final reporting period.

As the final reporting period is mere days away, CMS will need to release the final rule for the meaningful use modifications soon, or many providers will be left unable to meet the final reporting deadline.

When President George W. Bush issued an executive order in April 2004 to establish the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, he had a clear vision in mind: to create a secure, nationwide interoperable network that allows authorized users to access medical records of anyone at anytime and anywhere in the U.S. President Barack Obama knew very well that his plan for providing health insurance to all Americans would not be successful unless it was paired with a plan for controlling the quality and cost of health care services.

Ironically, Bush’s health IT network was (and remains) the instrumental element that guarantees the financial sustainability of Obamacare. It was no surprise that the economic stimulus package of 2009 allocated $25.9 billion for promoting the adoption and use of electronic health records systems among American physicians and hospitals. But a decade and $30 billion later, only half of the U.S. office-based physicians have adopted a basic electronic health records system and a mere 20 percent of them use such software, according to the latest statistics byRobert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Now that the government funds for promoting adoption and use of such records are dried up, what will happen to the rest of doctors who have not ditched their old-school paper charts yet and still keep their patients’ records in a filing cabinet? In the following, I discuss three drivers which together will lead the other half of physicians to adopt electronic health records systems in the near future.

Marketing efforts by vendors

To increase their profit margins, electronic health record vendors prefer to target customers who will either make a large purchase (large health care organizations with multiple users) or are close by and thus do not require expensive marketing efforts. That is part of the reason why many of the physicians who have adopted such systems are affiliated with larger hospitals or are located in populated urban locations. Now that the low-hanging fruits are all harvested, vendors will focus their marketing efforts on small, office-based practices and will ultimately increase adoption rates.

Mergers and acquisitions in the health care sector

With the march toward value-based payment models, new forms of health care organizations will continue to emerge. Some of the individually owned physician offices will become a part of an accountable care organization or will be acquired by a larger health care organization. When these smaller practices join larger ones, they will have to adopt the technologies that are already being used by the larger organization. While electronic health records may not create substantial value for an independent practice, they will be an unavoidable necessity when small practices join larger organizations. Without them, it will be impossible for a large health care organization to coordinate patient care, manage population risks and efficiently submit insurance claims.

Data analytics tools

With a basic electronic health record, a physician can record patient demographics, medications and problems, as well as type in his clinical notes and prescriptions. (No, he cannot electronically send the prescription to the pharmacy.) A physician can also view laboratory and imaging results (only if the record system is interoperable with that of a laboratory or imaging center). That’s it; nothing more. Almost all of the definedfunctionalities of a basic electronic health records system could be achieved by an elaborate Excel spreadsheet. That is why many doctors are still not willing to use them, even for free. Electronic health records by themselves are just cranky databases that only archive data.

However, with the advances in artificial intelligence and decision support systems, the data that was onerously collected by frustrated doctors can now be used to create something meaningful that make doctors’ lives a little easier. The health care industry is gradually getting out of the data collection era and is now entering into the data analysis era. When doctors see tangible benefits of analytics tools such as Isabel and Watson that are based on their electronic health record data, they will flock to such systems powered by analytics tools.

Earlier this week, Andy Slavitt, Acting Administrator for CMS, told a group of attendees at the J.P. Morgan Annual Health Care Conference that meaningful use is on its way out.

“Now that we effectively have technology into virtually every place care is provided, we are now in the process of ending meaningful use and moving to a new regime culminating with the [Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015] (MACRA) implementation,” Slavitt told attendees. “The meaningful use program as it has existed, will now be effectively over and replaced with something better.”

The idea that meaningful use, a program which began in 2011 and aimed to incentivize or penalize physicians for adopting an EHR system, would be over, naturally caused many physicians to celebrate. Melissa Young, an endocrinologist in Freehold, N.J., and a member of the Physicians Practice Editorial Board, e-mailed a three word reaction to the news: “Hooray! ‘Nuff said.”

The AMA had a more formal way of celebrating this news. Of Slavitt, AMA President and CEO, Steven Stack, an emergency physician, told Beckers Hospitals Review in a statement: "He listened to working physicians who said the meaningful use program made them choose between following Byzantine technological requirements and spending more time with their patients. This is a win for patients, physicians and common sense."

In his speech, Slavitt talked about winning the “hearts and minds” of physicians back. Getting rid of meaningful use would undoubtedly help the federal agency achieve that goal, as evidenced by the rising number of docs who opted out of the program due to its stringent requirements.  “The concept of meaningful use was always doomed to failure and it has been proven that there is no improvement in the quality of our healthcare delivery system and it has not reduced the costs of the provision of medical care,” Jeffrey Blank, a podiatric physician in Loxahatchee, Fla., and a member of the Physicians Practice Editorial Board, said via email.

Hold that Thought

Despite the excitement, Robert Tennant, health information technology policy director for the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), says physicians should keep the champagne on ice. For one thing, they will still be judged on EHR and technical capability.

At the conference, Slavitt talked about MACRA, which authorized the creation of the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS will measure and compensate physicians on quality, practice improvement, cost, and use of technology. Within MIPS will be elements of meaningful use. Rather than rewarding physicians for using technology, MIPS will aim to pay them on using it towards improving their outcomes.

While Tennant says a reworked meaningful use is “potentially very positive,” the guidelines for MIPS are supposed to be released and finalized this year, which he notes could be a problem for physicians. “Payment under MIPS is supposed to take effect in 2019. If the traditional approach of using a two-year look back [to make those adjustments] is in place, it would mean reporting would begin in 2017,” he says. “If you look at the timing from a regulatory process, we’re concerned with how this would be accomplished.”

In essence, vendors would have to redevelop software around the guidelines, train customers, and practices would have to go live within the space of a year. Moreover, Tennant says if MIPS regulations are finalized in December of this year, they’d likely overlap with a new presidential administration.

“Any new administration, the first thing they do is typically put all pending regulations on hold and review them before they approve,” he says.  Tennant also notes practices still have to be concerned over meaningful use regulations for 2016, including a full-year reporting period and the fact that Stage 3 of meaningful use is technically supposed to be mandatory in 2018.

“We don’t know what we are moving ahead to,” Tennant says. For practices, he advises to select software that fits their clinical needs and to not worry about “arbitrary and potentially changing” regulations. “Don’t focus on 2017 or beyond. We don’t know. The vendor doesn’t know.”

Even still, he is “cautiously optimistic” about Slavitt’s remarks. “We’re hoping CMS takes this opportunity to leverage MACRA to develop a program that is achievable and clinically relevant,” he says.

Blank is interested to see what lies ahead with government regulations, but is not as optimistic as Tennant. “I'm sure that many interest groups and the insurance industry will profit and doctors like me will continue to struggle,” he says.

EHR optimization projects are set to be an industry focus in light of the increased adoption of health IT. This focus is perhaps a natural transition, as providers are realizing that just because a healthcare organization adopts an EHR does not mean they are gleaning the most they can from it.

EHR optimization strategies are important options for organizations to look into. Optimizing an EHR system can help enhance a healthcare organization’s revenue cycle, patient care, or even contribute to better clinical analytics, depending on the focus of the optimization project.

In fact, studies show that EHR optimization is slated to be one of thehighest priorities for healthcare organizations in 2016. As more organizations complete EHR adoption and become comfortable with their systems, they see that it is time to develop strategies to better use this technology.

Below, we list the best strategies for beginning EHR optimization.

Reassess your EHR system

When organizations adopt a new EHR, it is natural that they learn the bare basics and take some time to adjust to using the new technology. However, after using the EHR for a while, it is important to reassess how the system is working within the care setting and looking for ways to more impactfully use it.

To begin EHR optimization, organizations should examine how the EHR has functioned within the organization thus far. IT staff can look at how the interface is functioning, financial support can examine the revenue cycle payoff the system yields, and physicians can examine the system’s clinical effectiveness.

From there, staff can develop optimization plans centered around the organization’s goals. For example, if an organization wants to optimize its EHR to improve revenue cycle results, it can concentrate on optimizing the system for clinical documentation and coding improvement.

Identify staff needs

Although looking at EHR outcomes to determine opportunities for optimization is important, it is also useful to consult with EHR users to find user-oriented optimization solutions.

Emory Healthcare is an example of this approach through its recent physician-facing EHR optimization project.

As Emory Healthcare CMIO Julie Hollberg, MD, explained to EHRIntelligence.com in a past interview, the EHR provides a great framework for physicians, but optimization is important for teaching them how to engage with the interface and the information on it.

"The technology like many things does amazing things, but it’s just a tool. You have to learn how to use it just like everything else. We have coupled this with required training so that people have a skeleton from which to hang new knowledge from the coaches when they are in clinic," Hollberg explained.

Also important to user-facing optimization is strong support, according to Hollberg. Emory made sure there was consistent communication between operations staff and users to ensure adequate optimization.

"During the week of go-live we have twice a day conference calls with the physician lead, clinical operations and administrative practice leads to go over the ongoing list of what the issues are and be able to react to those real time," she noted. "The week after go-live, we move from move from twice a day conference calls to three times a week.

However, the coaches are there on an ongoing basis and have a daily meeting or debrief and issues that are a problem are escalated to us."

Carefully cultivate your EHR optimization team

Although EHR optimization sounds as though it could primarily engage the EHR vendor, it is in fact a multi-disciplinary effort. Impact Advisors’ Physician Executive Tanya Edwards, MD, MMM, told us in a recent interview that it takes several team members to implement an EHR optimization strategy.

“Definitely, there is vendor involvement as far as improving usability. But there's a lot that's involved just from an individual organization standpoint,” Edwards explained. “There is a lot that health systems can do themselves as far as usability, taking a look at what those workflows really are. Sometimes, that involves looking at the clinical workflow, streamlining it, and then having IT support that. But sometimes it's really just inside IT and how you choose to build within the product.”

Although the optimization team should ideally be multi-faceted, Edwards told us that these teams should be led by operations experts who will  not only be able to accurately execute the work, but direct where the work should go next.

“It is a multi-disciplinary team that needs to be operationally-led because it is the people doing the work who understand the work,” Edwards said. “They understand why things need to be done in a certain order. They understand what the barriers are. Once those workflows are developed, then it's up to IT to come in and try to support that.”

As stated above, several industry experts predict that EHR optimization will be a main focus for healthcare organizations in 2016. Because of the lack of major project slated for the upcoming year, Edwards says she agrees with those predictions.

"It seems like we may have an opportunity in the next year to have a breather, be able to focus a little bit more on being able to optimize these systems, and really try to get the value out of the millions and millions of dollars that we have put in."

Planning and execution efforts toward successful ICD-10 implementation have been the largest resource-intensive undertaking by healthcare in decades. The last couple of years have enlisted dedicated planning by government agencies, healthcare plans, EHR vendors, and health information educators in facilitating the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10.

The cost of ICD-10 preparation was a valid concern for healthcare. Physicians and other qualified healthcare providers were impacted financially with making initial capital investment in certified EHR systems. The cost of initial training for their private clinics or group practices added to expenditures. Time and resources have been allocated to electronic data exchange testing over two fiscal years in anticipation of possible system interface and program incompatibilities. Concurrently, healthcare professionals had prepared for the code system changes by participating in provider-to-vendor testing while EHR companies, clearinghouses, and healthcare plans have been focused on vendor-to-payer data transmission.

The healthcare industry had ample time to analyze the factors that currently affect efficient and uninterrupted quality healthcare, but have healthcare providers anticipated the factors that will affect their practices after implementation?

A national effort to transition to a new and improved, but vastly different coding system inevitably affects various groups and multiple healthcare transactions. As a result of inaccurate data capture and delays in medical billing, it is critical that providers and administration examine how ICD-10 impacts patient care and reimbursement.

There are different factors that contribute to inferior health data reporting and to delays in provider cash flow:

INACCURATE DATA CAPTURED

1. EHR keywords tend to mimic the alphabetic index of the code book and are not set up in user-friendly clinical terms. Physicians and other qualified healthcare providers may have difficulty in locating the most specific and accurate ICD-10 code when using keyword search and look-up tools in their EHR.

2. Physician documentation practices may not correlate to main terms and subterms in which the ICD-10 code book or electronic code books are organized, making it more challenging for coders or other designated staff members to find the most appropriate code based on the completed notes.

3. Lack of physician engagement and the decision to not seek training in ICD-10 documentation lends itself to inconsistencies of code assignments from one healthcare provider to another. Many EHR products carry over the diagnosed conditions in the patient's current and past medical history. Other providers from the same practice may choose to assign these same ICD-10 codes previously noted in the record. Even if the providers were to decide to assign their own code and not carry over the previous ones, the lack of uniformity in the practice not only implies that there are coding errors being made, but that the data collected by insurance carriers, independent research groups, government agencies, and public health organizations is not a valid representation of current illnesses. Additionally, incorrect data exchanged across electronic systems is useless information and potentially harmful to the patient's health when shared with outside healthcare providers and facilities involved in the care of the same patient. The movement toward ICD-10 was fueled by a critical need to improve the quality and effectiveness of patient care. Inconsistent and inaccurate data quality thwarts this purpose.

4. General Equivalent Mapping (GEMs) resources are intended to provide the most approximate equivalent code from ICD-9, cross-walked to each possible ICD-10 code. The translation is not a perfect one because ICD-10 includes a plethora of information that previously had not been part of the ICD-9 code description. For example, ICD-10-CM introduces combination codes that detail the underlying disease and current manifestation, routinely seen in diabetes affecting other organ systems. The new coding system has established several new concepts and features for

ICD-10 diagnostic codes, allowing providers to:

• Include information on laterality

• Identify if it is the patient's initial encounter

• Identify the gestational trimester in which the disease process was diagnosed (including the severity of illness)

• Include the external cause

• Expand on the description of injuries, fractures, complications, adverse effects, and poisonings to now include very particular information, such as:

– The Gustilo grade of an open fracture

– If underdosing or noncompliance is due to medication cost-reduction

– If the provider is treating a pregnant patient for a particular condition that first developed during the mentioned trimester and not the episode of care that she presented for

– If the resulting complication resulted intraoperatively or postoperatively

While GEMs serve as a time-saving tool, the matching ratio from ICD-9 to ICD-10 is most frequently not a perfect 1:1 correlation. Most ICD-9 codes will map out to multiple possible options for correct ICD-10 code selection. Exclusive reliance on the GEMs will lead to incorrect code submission on billing claims.

REVENUE DELAYS AND REIMBURSEMENT REDUCTIONS

1. The medical profession continues to be reimbursed on our current fee-for-service (FFS) system. National and Local Coverage Determination policies issued by CMS list and detail the diagnostic codes for symptoms and conditions that necessitate commonly performed diagnostic or therapeutic procedures. These acceptable diagnostic codes support the ordering or performing of any diagnostic tests or treatments. Incorrect ICD-10-CM assignment increases the number of "medical necessity" denials for CPT and HCPCS II procedures billed by physician practices.

2. CMS released data on healthcare providers, clearinghouses, and billing companies that participated in their July 2015 end-to-end testing with MACs and DMEs. Medicare published information stating 29,286 claims were received, but only 25,646 were accepted. Additionally, 52.7 percent of all submitted claims were professional services from healthcare providers, 2.6 percent of claims denied by CMS were due to submission of invalid ICD-9-CM codes, and 1.8 percent were due to invalid ICD-10 codes. This 4.4 percent denial rate was higher than the 3 percent reported in April's end-to-end denials. Health information managers (HIM) and providers spent 36 years learning how to assign three-digit to five-digit codes for a complete code selection. Now, providers and coders have to correctly select the required number of alphanumeric characters — anywhere from three characters to seven characters. Denials for invalid code submission further delay provider reimbursement.

3. Code assignment errors increase with untrained clerical and ancillary staff responsible for reviewing billed codes. Coding errors include: incorrectly assigned unspecified codes, codes of lesser specificity, missed diagnostic codes, and symptoms. This is especially critical for practices engaged in the HCC Risk Adjustment coding incentives in which captured data for severity of illness and comorbidities is directly tied to annual financial incentives for the practice.

4. The nearly quintuple growth in available diagnostic codes presents challenges when physician practices redesign their encounter form or superbill. Practices have to be selective about which commonly used diagnostic codes will be featured on the superbill for quick reference and which will be excluded.

5. Medical coders increase the number of queries addressed to healthcare providers for incomplete documentation and unspecified diagnostic conditions. While this is most likely to occur in the inpatient setting, physician practices with in-house medical coders will have billing claims held until the providers adequately respond to clarification requests.

6. Productivity rates decrease because of the increased time required to document properly for specific codes. Medical coders and HIM professionals take additional time to accurately locate and sequence the appropriate codes based on documentation. The increase delay in billing the professional claims increase the number of days in A/R and adversely affect the practice's cash flow. Independent providers and provider practices had been advised to budget for the anticipated financial impact at least six months prior to implementation.

EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT AFTER OCT. 1

Several measures should be taken in order to streamline the transition in medical practices. Examination and revision of internal policies and processes is essential to ensuring that quality patient data is captured, while maintaining compliance in billing practices.

1. Provider practices should seek assistance from the EHR vendor.

• Vendors are best equipped to provide training and can also instruct office managers on how to run reports detailing the 50 most commonly used diagnostic and symptom codes in the practice.

• EHR companies can effectively re-label many diagnostic codes so that the keyword or main term appears as the clinician deems natural, and not necessarily as the medical coder is trained to look them up in the alphabetic index of the code book.

2. Practices should rely on industry resources for proper coding guidance.

• The American Hospital Association (AHA) publishes quarterly guidance on ICD-9-CM and now ICD-10 code assignment. Many challenging coding questions have been posed to the AHA by medical coders and the responses are available and organized by ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes.

• CMS has publicly released physician guidance on ICD-10-CM coding in multiple medical specialties. Information tips are available to registrants of their listserv. Also, the "Road to 10" online resources are specifically designed to assist physician practices in raising awareness and promoting physician engagement, as well as offering free training for physicians and other healthcare providers.

• The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), an agency under the Centers for Disease Control, has additional resources. NCHS offers official guidelines on proper ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS code assignment.

• The ICD-10-CM/PCS Transition Workgroup is an online community forum hosted and managed by the NCHS (on phConnect Collaboration for Public Health) to assist physicians in this implementation (visit bit.ly/PHC-ICD10 for more information).

• The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) offers a number of physician coding resources, including an "ICD-10 Toolkit" developed in 2012 which still proves relevant and instrumental today (visit bit.ly/AHIMA-ICD10-toolkit for more information).

• The AMA has printed and electronic ICD-10 publications on coding and documentation intended for providers. They offer online and live training for physicians.

Practices will need training and retraining after reevaluating post-implementation operations. Staff members come and go and providers may take medical posts in other organizations. Consistent and high-quality data reporting is essential and will directly impact practices as our healthcare industry phases out the FFS model and moves toward a value-based payment model. Practices should be making provisions for educational reinforcement after ICD-10 implementation, and should strongly consider the benefits of employing certified medical coders and HIM professionals.

BEST PRACTICES

The financial health of physician outpatient practices is affected by accurate ICD-10 coding. Just as importantly, patient health outcomes are directly tied to proper coding. Proper planning is key to compliance and optimal revenue management.

Continuing education and employment of certified coders will minimize coding errors. Close monitoring of the revenue cycle and reassessment of internal processes will help identify gaps. Utilizing industry resources is a cost-effective means of improving processes. All of these combined are ingredients in the best recipe for post-implementation success.

EHR and practice management (PM) systems come with built-in reporting capabilities but digesting all that information can be overwhelming. However, leveraging the power of Excel to sort and manipulate the data stored in your EHR can help you spot trends faster and implement steps to drive revenue growth.

“Excel is a great way to slice and dice your practice management data so you can really use it to improve,” says Nate Moore, CPA, MBA, an independent consultant and coauthor of “Better Data, Better Decisions: Using Intelligence in the Medical Practice.” “Excel allows you to filter, trend, and get your arms around reams of data.”

Excel offers an interactive tool called pivot tables that allow users to quickly sort, filter, and manipulate data, says Moore, who moderates the Excel Users Medical Group Management Association Community, an online resource for practice administrators. It gives users much more flexibility than an EHR, which typically offers a limited number of canned reports.

For example, your PM system can probably produce a general report on your collection rates at the front desk at the point of service. But a pivot table would allow you to slice that data in a variety of ways, such as individual employees’ collection rates by location or time of day.

In addition, you can connect Excel to the server where your data is stored so you are always working with the most current numbers, says Moore. That allows you to quickly run the same types of reports with updated data.

“A lot of practice administrators don’t run reports as often as they’d like because they take so much time to run and analyze using the PM and EHR,” says Moore. “Using Excel streamlines the process, making it more likely that reports will actually get produced.”

Moore offered a few examples of how pivot tables might be used to dig deeper into financial reports and zero in on potential problems:

1. Focus on overdue accounts. A general report on aging accounts receivable from your PM system might contain hundreds of pages, making it difficult to focus on specific trends. Exporting that data into pivot tables allows you to zero in on problem areas, such as claims overdue by 60 days categorized by insurer.

2. Gage productivity. If your compensation system is based on productivity, you can look at work relative value units by individual providers or during certain time periods.

3. Monitor workflow. Larger practices can monitor and compare activity at different locations. For example, how many patients did one employee register at a specific location vs. another employee at a different office?  How many appeals or claims did each individual employee process at each office?

4. Analyze your patient base. Using a basic pivot table, you can see all of your new patients in a given year categorized by month of visit, referring physician, diagnosis code, insurance, or clinic location. Analyzing the data reveals trends, such as how many patients each physician saw in each year over the past five years.

5. Group data. You can group data to spot referral trends. For example, how many commercially insured patients did one group of referring physicians refer to each individual provider in your practice, for each of the past five years?

EHR interoperability has been brought to the forefront lately as various health organizations and government agencies push for nationwide health information exchange. Furthermore, as integrated healthcare and care coordination become fixtures in the healthcare delivery industry, interoperability of systems between different kinds of practitioners shows itself to be critical.

A recent study by Maribel Cifuentes, RN, BSN, Melinda Davis, PhD, Doug Fernald, MA, Rose Gunn, MA, Perry Dickinson, MD, and Deborah J. Cohen, PhD, discussed how EHRs operated in 11 practices that were integrating the delivery of primary and behavioral healthcare. The researchers found that when behavioral health and primary care begins to integrate, the two kinds of practitioners brought separate EHR systems with them. This caused challenges and subsequent workarounds and solutions associated with EHR interoperability.

The study took 11 integrated practices in the Colorado area and gathered data regarding how EHRs worked for their needs, the challenges practices faced, what kinds of workaround strategies practices developed, and what kinds of long-term solutions the practices identified in order to promote care coordination over an EHR.

One of the challenges many of the integrated practices faced was that the EHRs were not necessarily designed to collect a certain kind of data. For example, in a primary care facility that hired several behavioral health counselors (BHCs), the facility’s EHR may not have been conducive to collective behavioral health data.

Second, EHRs generally lacked templates for primary care physicians and BHCs to develop coordinated care plans.

Third, many EHRs were not interoperable with each other, hindering primary care physicians and BHCs from working together in delivering coordinated care. The EHRs were also not compatible with tablet devices that were used to collect behavior health information in the waiting room prior to appointments. These tablets were used to present questionnaires that would provide behavioral health data. However, the lack of interoperability between these devices and EHRs made it so the data collected in the questionnaire could not easily be uploaded into the EHR.

The study reports four workarounds that were developed in the face of these challenges. First, as stated above, when the primary care and behavioral health practices first integrated, the physicians often had their own separate EHR systems. In order to make sure both systems had patient information, physicians had to manually enter the data into both EHRs. While this method may have been effective in ensuring patient information was stored in both EHRs, it was not particularly time or financially effective.

Second, medical assistants had to manually scan printed documents into EHRs. While this method may have also been effective, it presented several time and financial issues. Furthermore, the scanned documents were often harder to find in the EHR, hindering the physician from delivering care to patients in a timely manner.

Third, practitioners relied on patients and other physicians to recall patient information. This workaround was not effective because patient and physician memory was neither reliable nor accurate. One physician reported having to recall patient information that was told to him several weeks before meeting with the patient. Due to the amount of time that had passed since he had last discussed this patient, he was unable to determine what kinds of services the patient needed. This resulted in the patient taking tests that had already been administered.

Fourth, practitioners employed “freestanding tracking systems,” such as spreadsheets, that were not a part of the EHR. For example, one practice stored information regarding adolescents taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications in an Excel spreadsheet. Although this was widely used amongst the practice, it took enormous effort from practitioners to maintain, and the information on the spreadsheet was not easily integrated into the EHR.

By the end of the study, researchers observed that practices began moving past workarounds and toward more long-term solutions to their challenges in order to make their integrated practices more sustainable in the future. The researchers noted that these solutions were created by each practice’s own HIT teams and required their own funding. Three key solutions amongst the participating practices emerged.

First, many practices created their own customized EHR templates. These templates existed within their pre-existing EHR systems, and simply added more fields for data entry that would be more suitable for practitioners’ needs. However, developing these templates was an arduous task.

“Creating customized EHR templates was time consuming and required dedicated HIT staff working collaboratively with BHCs and primary care providers,” the researchers reported. “Practices that did not have access to these resources were not able to create customized templates as readily, or had to pay EHR vendors to do so.”

Second, some practices purchased EHR upgrades and reported several improvements from doing so, including increased interoperability, enhanced reporting templates, and more interfaces for integrating primary and behavioral health care.

However, EHR upgrades were considerable financial investments for practices. Practices were not allowed to upgrade their EHRs using the money allocated to them by participating in the study, so the upgrade needed to be a part of the individual practice’s investments. This financial burden made it so only five of the 11 participating practices were able to upgrade their EHRs.

The final emerging solution was the union of two EHRs. At the start of the study, four of the 11 participating practices were using two different EHRs -- one for behavioral health care and one for primary care. By the end of the practice, three of them were in the midst of merging those two EHRs, and one had built an interface that extracted data from multiple EHRs and stored the data in one place. While these solutions were quite complicated and costly, they were the most effective in overcoming interoperability challenges.

Despite the advances these practices made, the researchers maintained that integrated providers may still face hurdles in the future.

“EHR systems are not yet optimally designed to meet the needs of practices integrating behavioral health and primary care,” the researchers stated. “Our study found that EHRs generally lack features essential to support key integration functions such as documenting and tracking longitudinal data, working from shared care plans, and template-driven documentation for common behavioral health conditions such as depression.”

The researchers provided guidance on how to improve EHR use in integrated care situations, stating that perhaps systems need to start being designed for integrated care, as should different incentive programs.

“In the future, HIT systems should be intentionally designed, in cooperation with clinicians; to support and enable these integrated care functions, as well as the different modes of communication and care coordination tasks that occur between multi-professional members of integrated teams,” the researchers maintained.

Furthermore, the researchers stated that more financial incentives should be provided to allow practices to make these kinds of changes. Although several EHR and interoperability incentive programs exist, none of them provide incentives that would help practices change their EHR systems to make it more usable in an integrated practice.

Although physician EHR use has many benefits, including increased care coordination and patient engagement, issues with interoperability and health information exchange sometimes hinder the diagnosis process.

Such was the case with the first Ebola patient in Dallas, Texas last year. According to a post by Dean Sittig, PhD, and Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH, there are various different EHR practices that could have been done that may have potentially changed the outcome of the patient’s Ebola diagnosis.

Sittig and Singh based their theories on an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report that made suggestions for best practice uses for EHRs that would make diagnosis easier and more precise. According to the authors, had some of these practices been in place during the time of Ebola Patient Zero’s hospital visits, his diagnosis may have been more effective.

First, Sittig and Singh discussed the care coordination benefits of EHRs and how they may not have been fully utilized at the time of Ebola Patient Zero’s first emergency room visit. Although Ebola Patient Zero’s medical and travel history were taken by the ER nurse, that information was not passed along to the ER doctor, something which may have been prevented had different EHR practices been in place.

“We recognize that there are many other ways to improve teamwork but in this day and age a major component of making teams function well is having EHRs that support teamwork and communication. Unfortunately, EHRs are not inherently designed this way and substantive ‘real-world’ usability testing is needed in order for them to do so,” wrote Sittig and Singh.

The authors suggest that EHR interfaces could improve both nurse and physician workflows in such a way that care coordination and teamwork would be better facilitated. For example, note-taking screens should not necessarily distinguish between physician notes and nurse notes, Sittig and Singh suggest. Instead, all members of the care team should be privy to all of the patient’s medical history.

“The ability to review every patient’s complete medical history in a longitudinal manner is a key factor in making an accurate and timely diagnosis. EHR screen designs could be greatly improved if they were shared among all EHR users, regardless of vendor,” the authors wrote.

Furthermore, Sittig and Singh discuss certain misuses of EHR technology. For example, the authors suggest that perhaps EHR quality measures and incentive programs should not always require nurses be tasked with gathering information regarding patient flu vaccination history. The authors maintain that although it is impossible to know whether this change in workflow would have improved Ebola Patient Zero’s diagnosis, it is a commonly acknowledged fact that certain required EHR incentive measures have an effect on how clinicians communicate with patients.

Sittig and Singh state that Ebola Patient Zero is a case study for all of the work that can be done to improve EHR use in diagnostic settings. These improvements can be made through industry collaboration and the sharing of best practices. Furthermore, the pair states that EHRs need interoperability to allow for collaboration and to help paint a complete picture of the patient’s care. Through the participation of policymakers and industry stakeholders, Sittig and Singh state that EHR healthcare can become safer and more effective.

At a time when American providers are offering some of the best care in the world, even the smallest medical practices cannot slip. They must offer top-tier services, while meeting and maintaining compliance with government regulations. This is no small order, and it's made increasingly difficult considering the price tag that comes with integrating cutting-edge technology — in particular, EHRs — into an office, especially for solo practitioners or practices with just a handful of doctors.

While the incentive to invest is greater than ever with the ongoing meaningful use program, the cost of implementation is still pricey. Physicians working in the smallest practices have to get creative when trimming technology expenses.

KEEPING COSTS IN CHECK

"Maintaining an electronic health record system is our largest expense," says pediatrician R. Frerichs of North Raleigh Pediatric Group. His practice isn't an isolated case. According to a survey in Medical Economics from February 2014, 45 percent of physicians spent more than $100,000 on EHR systems including service, hardware, software, training, and consulting. However, there are ways to shrink that number considerably.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by options available in the marketplace. Practices on the hunt for tech investments must be mindful of what is specifically needed. "There is a want to measure everything without knowing why or what to do with the measurements," says Kyle Wailes, senior vice president of physician services at the Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based technology solutions provider, Intermedix. "A smart and focused practice can avoid much of this by determining must-haves ahead of time and knowing exactly what is needed when purchasing technology."

In addition to searching for the product that best matches a practice's needs and work flow, there is value in adopting open source products. Dozens of open source software programs have been developed for the medical industry with data security and usability at the forefront, says Greg Scott, owner and operator of Infrasupport Corporation, an IT consulting firm in Eagan, Minn. With open source software, physicians don't have to become IT experts, since someone else developed the software and the additional features. They do have to be willing to explore technology built using an open source model by accepting patches, new features, and other support built by an interested community. Any potential inconvenience is likely to be offset with the cost savings, which can be as much as 80 percent compared to proprietary competition, Scott says.

Similarly, practices should seek out "disruptive vendors" — those working on the innovative edge of mainstream technology — because they typically have lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products, experts say. Though the products and services may not appear as attractive as existing solutions when compared against traditional companies, the cost is often cheaper, says Austin Kirkland, principal and founder of healthcare management services consultancy Outperform, LLC, based in Falls Church, Va. "Many businesses have developed software tailored to suit specific specialties or to operate with less robust features, lower development costs, and reduced operating overhead," he says. "As a result, they are able to offer their products at a better price point to specific buyers than their larger competitors, so shopping for the right solution can save money."

Once practices have made the initial investment for EHR and practice management systems, there are ways to manage the ongoing costs associated with overseeing them. The unfortunate truth is that technology requires constant upgrading to remain efficient and compliant, which of course, comes at a cost. Instead of hosting technology infrastructure onsite at a practice, medical offices should consider migrating most (if not all) technology services to a cloud services provider or third-party data center. Doing so requires an initial upfront cost, but service fees are generally paid monthly at a predictable, scalable rate. Additionally, this frees medical practices from worrying about hardware failures or updating software because managing those responsibilities falls to a third-party vendor.

SHRINKING PAYMENTS IN A SMALL PRACTICE

Despite doing due diligence to select the best and most cost-effective products and maintenance options for a small practice, the fact is that someone still has to pay the bill for technology.

One of the best things practices can do is find support within a larger group of physicians. Frerichs says his participation in a practice management group called Raleigh Durham Medical Group (RDMG) has been a critical factor in his ability to manage costs for his practice. "The power in numbers allows us to negotiate deals for pricing that I would not be able to attain alone," he says. For example, he adds, collaboration through RDMG allowed them to obtain optimal pricing for purchasing an EHR. Furthermore, when the need to replace or update equipment arises, the group provides flexible financing options.

Flexible financing also allows physicians to relieve some of the weight that comes with buying technology outright. For practices that don't have credit available to take term loans — or those that simply choose not to — leasing options are available. This ensures practices have cash on hand to pay for consumables, payroll, fees and taxes, and other necessities, says Jim Phelps, CEO of Beaverton, Ore.-based equipment financier, Capital Equipment Leasing, and it keeps a line of credit open for other needs. Leasing also removes the permanence that comes with an outright product purchase, allowing companies to upgrade or change technology with minimal cost. "Software and hardware can be leased on a turn-key basis, allowing the practice flexibility as needed to move at the end of a lease and to avoid upfront capital needs," Kirkland says.

Though hardware and software can be leased, other products can as well. Phelps' company has leased digital X-ray, sonogram, and MRI machines, and exam tables. "We can lease any equipment that is not 'body invasive,'" he says.

Investing in technology, whether hardware and software, diagnostic equipment, or other necessary products and services, is a given in the medical industry. Small practices must be innovative to keep on top of advances in the industry, because the ultimate bottom line is providing the very best care to each and every patient.