Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

Dimension Data took advantage when the passage of the federal stimulus package and its pay for performance program started pushing healthcare organizations to implement EMR.

With healthcare legislation looming on the horizon and the stimulus bill’s healthcare IT directives already passed, 2010 holds promise for VAR s large and small looking to enter the healthcare market. Dimension Data is one integrator, obviously in the large category, that is helping healthcare practices and hospitals implement network solutions and support their moves to Electronic Medical Records ( EMR ).

“In order for medical personnel to derive maximum benefit from the new system and want to adopt it over the ‘traditional way,’ they need to have data appear on their screens within seconds and be able to filter and modify it instantly – anytime, anywhere.” Said Felix Guzman, senior consultant for Dimension Data.  

One Dimension Data customer is InterMed, a physician-owned healthcare practice with almost 75,000 patient. InterMed is leaps and bounds ahead of other similar-sized practices in the country. The company already implemented EMR across its practice and also integrated it with a new contact center, provided by Dimension Data, aimed at improving patient care and capturing pay for performance incentives from both the government and insurance companies. 

Last year’s passage of the federal stimulus package and its pay for performance program is pushing healthcare organizations to implement EMR, and putting penalties in place that make EMR a necessary choice for hospitals and practices. Organizations that implement over the next year can enjoy higher incentive payments on Medicare and Medicaid beginning in 2011, while those that do not will suffer penalties beginning in 2015.

Implementing EMR is not an easy or cheap task, however. On top of a $400,000 software license fee, hardware investment, and additional service implementation costs, McCormack reported an initial 10 percent drop in productivity among physicians that translated into a revenue loss well into the six or seven figures during the change management process. From a VAR perspective, however, these sophisticated engagements will play out over long stretches of recurring services revenue. McCormack is confident that the system will reap return over time, however, pointing to pay for performance incentives established by the healthcare industry and the federal government as well as new patient acquisition.

To support its EMR migration, InterMed also invested in a 30-seat call center and network infrastructure which reaped tangible return for the healthcare practice through new patient acquisition and improved patient care and efficiency. 

McCormack said InterMed implemented its contact center, provided by Dimension Data and powered by Cisco Unified Contact Center, to improve customer service workflow and relieve patient frustration. 

“If the patients were calling us for anything else besides an appointment booked out months in advance, in most situations, the call was put into the voicemail of a clinical assistant, said McCormack.” Inevitably, it led to high level of frustration and back and forth phone calls.”

InterMed’s contact center is fully integrated with its EMR system so clinicians and call center representatives access the necessary information to complete the call, including doctor schedules, open appointments, and prescription information. 

Source: Intermed

You can discuss more about EMR & its related topics in our EMR User Group.