There are valuable lessons to be learned from practices that have already implemented an EMR system.

“There are things we wished were different with our system, but we took our time and really knew the good, the bad and the ugly about all of the available choices before settling on one,” said Laurie K. Brown, COMT, COE, practice administrator at Drs. Fine, Hoffman & Sims, LLC, a
full-service ophthalmic practice in Eugene, Ore.

When Professional Eye Associates (PEA) in Georgia went live with their system, D. Brian Kim, MD, says he made the mistake of expecting perfection too soon. “Adopting EMR is a process and requires not only a great deal of research upfront to choose the best vendor for your practice, but also requires a great deal of patience.” Dr. Kim says he wanted everything to happen too fast. “I needed to let go of the reigns and trust that my staff was capable and committed to the process.”

Dr. Kim says the biggest reason for his practice’s success was having the right scribe. “The scribe is the direct liaison between me and the system, allowing me to focus on what matters most — my patients,” says Dr. Kim.

Adopting and Adapting Slowly
At PEA, there are three ophthalmologists, two optometrists, an optical center and an ASC. They’ve integrated all EMR components and their practice management system is from the same vendor. They have not yet integrated their ASC.

Ms. Brown’s practice shares one EMR among its specialists in the satellite offices and ASC, but has yet to integrate the optical shop. “As a large cooperative team committed to retaining efficiency, we were able to develop templates that worked for everyone, and we order extra features for subspecialties to use as needed,” she says.

Dr. Kim says the imaging software that ran with his EMR was “really terrible” and not intuitive for an ophthalmic practice, so the group purchased a separate imaging software package that’s tablet-based and integrates into their EMR system.

The Wish List
Ms. Brown says the practice has been successfully using its system for more than 7 years, but wishes the provider had a “stronger commitment to providing true interfaces for our ophthalmic equipment,” but the commitment to the practice’s overall success outweighed the negatives. Like other practices, Ms. Brown says her system has “very good work-arounds for importing our ophthalmic equipment outputs into our EMR, but we look forward to more true ophthalmic interfaces to realize the most efficiency possible.”

For those “mega-practices” with numerous physicians, Dr. Kim says it’s unlikely any current system is going to make everyone happy. “They can do everything, but they don’t do any one thing really well,” he states. That may be one of the biggest reasons ophthalmologists have been slow to jump on the EMR bandwagon. Ultimately, he’d like to see ophthalmology become a key area of focus for EMR providers.

Dr. Kim can be reached via email at kim@professionaleye.com. Ms. Brown can be reached via email at lkbrown@finemd.com.