Upgrading to Althea SmartEHR: A Strategic Move for Specialty Practices

Upgrading to Althea SmartEHR: A Strategic Move for Specialty Practices

As medical practices evolve, so too must their supporting technologies. Doctors may find their current electronic health record (EHR) system no longer meets emerging needs as technology advances, regulations change, and patient expectations rise. Upgrading to a modern EHR solution designed specifically for specialty practices can position doctors for long-term success.

Key Takeaways for Providers:

  • Built ground-up around the workflows of specialty practices
  • Optimized for usability and high physician satisfaction
  • Enables comprehensive, template-driven clinical documentation
  • Embedded clinical decision support tools unique to each specialty
  • Customized order sets, favorites lists, and prescription workflows
  • Bi-directional connectivity with labs, imaging centers, pharmacies
  • Integrated patient engagement portal and messaging
  • Quality reporting
  • Cloud-based delivery model without IT infrastructure
  • Rapid deployment model and templated content for fast onboarding
  • Ongoing optimization services to maximize value over time

Why Evaluate a New Specialty-Focused EHR?

Limitations often include:

  • Rigid documentation tools lacking specialty-specific templates
  • Missing customized order sets and protocols
  • Difficulty capturing detailed clinical narratives
  • Complex workflows slowing specialty-specific tasks
  • Limited real-time data at the point of care
  • Billing and reporting gaps around procedures
  • Lack of customized clinical decision support

By migrating to a purpose-built EHR like Althea SmartEHR, doctors can realize productivity and efficiency gains while improving the quality of care delivery and patient satisfaction.

Key Attributes of Althea SmartEHR

Althea SmartEHR delivers an intuitive, specialty-focused EHR with patented clinical documentation, embedded insights, patient engagement tools, and analytics.

Specialized Clinical Documentation

  • Custom documentation templates for each specialty
  • Concise summarization of patient history
  • Drawing tools for body maps and wound charts
  • Specialty-specific workflows to complete notes efficiently

Clinical Decision Support

  • Diagnosis-specific order sets, plans, and patient instructions
  • Contextual recommendations within documentation workflows
  • Screening and preventive care gap alerts
  • Drug-to-drug and drug-to-allergy checking

Interoperability and Data Exchange

  • Bi-directional connectivity to imaging centers, labs, pharmacies
  • Referral and care coordination tracking
  • Secure messaging with patients
  • Health information exchange connectivity

Practice Analytics

  • Specialty-specific dashboards and quality measures
  • Procedure tracking and revenue analytics
  • Custom reporting builder

Cloud-Based Delivery

  • Software-as-a-service model without servers or backups
  • Automatic upgrades to latest version – no patches needed
  • Accessible from any web browser – no installation
  • Encrypted data security mechanisms

Developing an Effective Migration Strategy

Migrating specialty practice to Althea SmartEHR involves careful planning and preparation:

  • Assembling a multidisciplinary project team including physician champions
  • Conducting detailed current state workflow analysis
  • Establishing a realistic timeline for system setup, testing, training, and go-live
  • Cleaning up data in legacy EHR before migrating records
  • Building customized templates, preferences, order sets based on specialty needs
  • Running rigorous validation testing for interfaces, workflows, documentation, and reporting
  • Developing tailored training programs for providers, nurses, staff
  • Planning post go-live refinements and workflow optimizations

Althea Health provides full-service implementation including project management, interface builds, data migration, training, go-live support, and ongoing optimization. Taking advantage of prebuilt specialty content packages can accelerate deployments.

Realizing the Benefits of Althea SmartEHR

By upgrading to Althea’s innovative specialty-focused EHR, practices can achieve:

  • Increased physician productivity and satisfaction
  • More efficient documentation tailored to each specialty
  • Enhanced clinical decision support at the point of care
  • Stronger care coordination with automated referrals and messaging
  • Robust analytics on procedures, diagnoses, quality metrics, and population health
  • Higher patient satisfaction through engagement portal and tools
  • Reduced IT workload without servers or infrastructure to manage
  • Ongoing optimization to maximize value from the platform

Many practices see significant improvements in provider workflows, documentation efficiency, data access, patient care, and their overall competitive positioning after migrating to Althea SmartEHR’s specialty-centric platform.

Outdated EHR systems designed for general practices can hinder specialty groups from delivering first-rate care efficiently. Migrating to Althea SmartEHR, an innovative cloud-based specialty EHR, allows practices to regain productivity and improve patient outcomes through specialty-specific documentation, insights, order sets, patient tools, analytics, and more. With Althea Health’s accelerated specialty deployment packages, practices can migrate quickly and realize rapid return on investment.

Sources:

[1] Althea Health – https://www.mdsynergy.com/altheasmartehr

[2] Journal of Medical Internet Research – “Electronic Health Records (EHR) for Specialty Care: The Future Is Here, but Where Are We Heading?” – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8379539/

[3] HealthIT Analytics – “Specialty EHRs Can Improve Provider Workflow, Patient Care” – https://healthitanalytics.com/news/specialty-ehrs-can-improve-provider-workflow-patient-care