GroupOne Revenue Cycle Blog 

Ever wonder what an actual end user of an EHR software thinks of it? A recent survey by Reaction Data asked 889 physicians just that. Nearly 57 percent of respondents belong to ambulatory care facilities while the remaining 43 percent belong to acute care facilities. According to the survey data, Epic is by far the most widely used EHR but when it comes to EHR reviews and which EHR physicians are most satisfied with, eClinicalWorks takes the lead with 82% overall satisfaction.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act into law. The Cures Act invests in President Obama's priorities in Science and Health by providing funding for various projects such as the Precision Medicine Initiative and Cancer Moonshot while targeting better EHR use and supporting health data interoperability.

Most EHR systems have fallen short of physician expectations over the years. System functionality, cost, and poor customer service have all contributed to a growing number of practices switching or replacing their EHR software. When practices are considering switching to a new EHR, data migration is a common question. Here I'll cover some helpful data migration tips to help your practice during the transition to a new EHR.

In the next few years, the existence of clinical and financial business intelligence is expected to grow significantly, according to the HIMSS Analytics 2016¹ Clinical & Business Intelligence (C&BI) Essentials Brief. And rightly so, seeing that clinical and business intelligence is essential for healthcare organizations looking to reduce costs and move to data-driven healthcare improvements.

Epic, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, NextGen and MEDITECH have been named the most widely used EHRs by physicians, according to Medscape’s 2016 EHR Report. Epic continues to dominate the EHR market for hospitals and health systems at 28% representing 48% of users—more than three times as many as Cerner (13%), its next largest competitor. Missing from this year’s list is Allscripts, which dropped out of the top five altogether driven by its 2012 decision to drop its small practice software, My Way. 

Text messaging is fully integrated into millions of people's lives and is a convenient, less obtrusive alternative to the phone call. With 97% of Americans using their phones to text, many physicians are wondering how to incorporate text message communication into their practices.