By Michael Nissenbaum, CPA.

Once seen as impervious to the global financial crisis, physicians have now begun to feel the brunt of the economic downturn.  Many primary care physicians and specialists report seeing fewer patients today, as compared to one year ago. 
 
Parents defer optional pediatric visits, while other patients postpone or cancel procedures typically used to exhaust remaining deductibles at year’s end.  For example, gastroenterologists who previously had end-of-year waiting lists for colonoscopies report having immediate availability at the close of 2008.  Healthcare consumers are choosing not to move ahead with …

By Jonathan Teich, M.D.
Physicians can do much to facilitate the selection and adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and e-prescribing systems, including clinical decision support (CDS) technologies that bring important information to the physician’s attention just when it is most needed. 
 
CDS has been shown to produce very significant improvements in quality, safety, efficiency and cost when properly implemented; however, sometimes it is not utilized to its full effectiveness, due to barriers related to design and communication.   The physician champion participates in design, selection, testing, and communication to others, and plays a vital role …

The design of an EHR vastly exceeds the content and functional capability of the rather static chart that has for years been produced in the litigation process.

Physicians who are interested in obtaining such technology from donors, such as hospital, should carefully examine whether the proposed arrangement can be structured within appropriate e-Prescribing and/or e-Health Records safe harbor and exception.

By taking one step at a time, you can narrow down the list of potential vendors, learn all you can about the functionality and features of each system, and then select the one that is right for your practice.