The investment is particularly significant for our clients, who will see even more rapid feature releases and additional innovations that deliver better ways of engaging patients.

We also view the investment as an endorsement of our success to date, and the new market we are essentially breaking open—patient engagement.

Healthcare moving in a new direction

The tides of healthcare are moving in a new direction. Healthcare must become increasingly consumer-centric, but practices today generally lack the tools necessary to seriously engage patients in ways that make a measurable impact in their operational efficiency, or in the patient experience.

The promise of patient engagement is to go from a patchwork of solutions from multiple vendors — patient portal, website, patient reminders — and unite them all under a single integrated platform.

That means you have just one integration system to manage, your patients receive one integrated experience, and each of your solutions becomes more powerful and less expensive.

It’s a disruptive change, and we’re thrilled to be leading the market in setting a new vision for how medical practices will engage their patients.

Investors with a strong track record

Back to our financing, the round was led by Long River Ventures with participation from Canal Partners, plus a national roster of private investors. We are proud to have assembled an amazing team of investors who have already added immense value to Omedix. Will Cowen of Long River Ventures has been added to our Board of Directors, and Jim Armstrong of Canal Partners is an observer to the Board.

New career opportunities at Omedix

And, of course, we will be accelerating our hiring! Omedix holds a unique position in the healthcare industry as a developer of outstanding software and provider of superb customer service.

If you are interested in helping us build great software (software engineers) or in selling it (sales), visit our careers page and submit an application at http://omedix.com/careers.

Check back for updates

We have more exciting news in the pipeline that we’ll be sharing later this year. Please check back for the latest updates.

Congratulations to all of the Omedix team who worked hard to make this possible, and to our clients who have entrusted us with their patient relationships.

Best regards and the best of health,

Josh Padnick
CEO

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Why is this important to our customers?

1. Our software has passed a rigorous security and privacy review process that elevates our platform above non-certified vendors.
2. We certified our ability to provide patients with “Timely Access” to their medical record – certification criteria 170.304(g).  This means patients can have online access to their clinical information, such as lab results, medications, problem list, and medication allergy list.
3. For our customers seeking federal grant support for their EHR implementation, this certification officially deems the Omedix patient portal solution capable of enabling physicians to qualify for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).*  Our patient portal technology tightly integrates with two EMR platforms – NextGen and GE Centricity.

Why “Timely Access”?

In order for providers to receive grant money, they have to use certified software.  A software vendor can either certify on all Meaningful Use measures and call themselves a certified “Complete EHR”, or on a select few criteria and call themselves a certified “EHR Module.”  Omedix is not in the business of developing EHR software, so why did we bother to certify?  The answer is that there are some criteria that are impossible to meet without some way for the patient to interface with the practice’s EMR system.

One of these criteria is the ability for patients to see their medical record online in real time – otherwise known as “Timely Access.”  PortalPlus is a solution to that problem – the patient registers online, passes a verification process, and can then securely see portions of their up-to-date medical record over the web.

This means the patient can log in and see all their medications (past and present) whenever they need to. They can see a list of the problems they were diagnosed with. They can even see their lab results and allergies.  Your patients will be thrilled.

So what’s next?

Release more features and certify for additional measures!  One of our next objectives is to focus on certifying for additional criteria that will help our customers meet Meaningful Use more efficiently.  These include providing the patient with an electronic copy of their entire medical record and their clinical summary in CCR or CCD format through the patient portal.  Stay tuned for an unveiling of our new personalized patient education platform as well.

PortalPlus is the next generation patient portal that’s moving patient engagement far beyond accessibility to records and results.  We’re creating a dynamic community health platform.

*To learn more about the certification requirements and Meaningful Use, the federal government’s ONC provides a wealth of information, click here.

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Automatically Route Patient Requests

Many of our clients wanted the ability to have appointment requests for Dr. Jones routed to one staff member, and requests for Dr. Smith routed to another. But why stop there? In a real doctor’s office, the staff know who to notify about appointment requests based on a variety of real-world factors. At Omedix, we believe that the customer experience should be as close to the real-world as possible. As a result, we’re pleased to announce a sophisticated engine for routing online patient requests based on almost anything in the request — from requested location, to requested doctor or even appointment type.  It’s almost like a smart virtual receptionist, who always delivers patient request information to the people who need it most!

For our current clients, this feature is already live.  You’ll just need to work with your Omedix Support Rep to activate it.

Filter Providers by Location

Another popular request was the ability to allow patients to request an appointment only with those providers who are available at the location the patient selected. This feature is now live for all clients as well, and also needs to be activated with an Omedix Support Rep.

Integrated Online Bill Pay

Omedix clients can now enjoy an integrated online bill pay experience.  When your patients log into the patient portal, if you’ve ordered online bill pay, they will now see that feature available directly.

Various Goodies

Finally, we’ve improved some of the plumbing to make your day-to-day management easier.  Practice administrators now have ability to edit practice user information and deactivate users, the auto-logout time interval is now controllable directly by your organization and can be extended up to 45 minutes.

Summary

At Omedix, we pride ourselves in our ability to release innovative, exciting features on a regular schedule. As a result, something new is always right around the corner!

Please check back often for more feature announcements and other interesting information.

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A Quick Overview of Meaningful Use

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act authorized the US government to spend billions of dollars to incentivize the adoption of electronic health record (EHR) software through the HITECH program. Any “Eligible Provider” at a medical practice can receive up to $44,000 over a 4-5 year period in exchange for using “Certified EHR technology” and meeting the “Meaningful Use” objectives.

The Role of a Patient Portal in Meeting Meaningful Use

The foundation of Meaningful Use is, of course, having a certified EHR system, but there are some objectives that are cumbersome or even impossible to achieve without a patient portal. These fall into two main categories – (1) providing patients with direct access to parts of their health record, and (2) providing patient education.

The specific Meaningful Use measures that a patient portal can help to meet are:

• To provide patients with…
  • Timely electronic access to changes in health information (Menu Set)
  • Electronic copies of their health record (Core Set)
  • Clinical summaries after each office visit (Core Set)
  • Patient-specific education resources (Menu Set)

During Stage 1 of Meaningful Use (2011 – 2012), Providers have to meet all 15 core objectives and 5 out of the 10 menu objectives. During Stage 2 (2013 – 2014), it is likely that all the menu objectives will become mandatory and that additional requirements will be added.

Timely Access is the Most Important Measure for Patient Portals

In practice, many EHR companies have recognized that their clients want to purchase a patient portal from a third party (versus the EHR company themselves), so we have found that the EHR company will help the practice meet all the measures in Meaningful Use with the lone exception of the Timely Access measure.

One of the most interesting developments in Meaningful Use was when the Office of the National Coordinator clarified that while a practice only has to demonstrate 5 out of the 10 Menu Set measures, the practice must “possess technology” on all Menu Set measures. In other words, even if you don’t plan on demonstrating the Timely Access measure, you still need to purchase technology that is “certified” for it in order to qualify for Meaningful Use. You can learn more at http://questions.cms.hhs.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/10162.

Essentially, this means you must purchase a certified patient portal to meet Meaningful Use.

Looking in Depth at the Other Patient Portal Meaningful Use Requirements

Let’s examine these requirements one by one and see how a patient portal is either necessary or very helpful in meeting that measure.

Timely electronic access to changes in health information (Menu Set)
“More than 10% of all unique patients seen by the EP (eligible physician) are provided timely (available to the patient within four business days of being updated in the certified EHR technology) electronic access to their health information subject to the EP’s discretion to withhold certain information.”

This measure requires the practice to provide patients with real-time access to their electronic health record online. It is almost impossible to demonstrate this measure without a patient portal. The patient portal must integrate with your EHR system and have the capability to give patients a secure online account to view their medical record. The 10% usage requirement further necessitates that at least 10% of all unique patients coming through the practice’s doors sign up for the portal during the demonstration period.

Electronic copies of health records (Core Set)

“More than 50% of all patients of the eligible provider who request an electronic copy of their health information are provided it within 3 business days.”

For this measure, a patient portal is very helpful, but not indispensable. You can send patients a CD, DVD or a USB drive to satisfy the requirement. However, if your patient portal can allow the patient to view their medical record and download an e-copy ot their computer you can save on the costs and administrative burden of mailing and encrypting electronic media with that information.

Clinical summaries of office visits (Core Set)

“Clinical summaries provided to patients for more than 50% of all office visits within 3 business days.”

This measure gives you two non-portal options: 1) print out the summary right after the visit, 2) mail it immediately that evening or the next day, as you only have three business days. This can be a burdensome and expensive process if you have to do it for no less than 50% of all visits. If your patient portal connects to your EMR, it could automatically show the patient their clinical summary after it has been completed and approved! Again, mailing and administrative costs are reduced by using a patient portal to meet this measure.

Patient-specific education resources (Menu Set)
“More than 10% of all unique patients seen by the Eligible Provider are provided with patient0specific education resources.”

Practically speaking, this means that either a person or a computer program has to look into the patient’s record, see what condition they have, and provide a relevant article or video to the patient. Your office staff could manually print an article, mail an article, or let the patient watch a video while in the office. A patient portal that is integrated with an EMR and a patient education database could automatically read the ICD-9 (or soon ICD-10) code associated with the patient’s condition and send the patient the relevant articles.

Patient Portals and Meaningful Use – The Conclusion

To meet the Menu Set item “timely access to changes in health information” you must have a patient portal. For the remaining three measures, a patient portal with the right functionality can save you a tremendous amount of money on staff time, printing costs, and mailing costs, and alleviate general frustration.

If you a are a practice manager, physician, or journalist and want to learn more about how Omedix PortalPlus can help you meet meaningful use, please contact us.

Coming Next

In the next post in our Meaningful Use series, we will explore how to choose a patient portal vendor and how to know if that vendor is certified for meaningful use.

About Omedix PortalPlus

PortalPlus is a next-generation patient portal produced by Omedix. PortalPlus differentiates itself from the competition by offering a vastly superior user experience, fine-grained customizability, a unique focus on leveraging the patient portal for marketing, and a long-term view to how your patient portal will function in the broader community. Learn more at http://omedix.com/patient-portal.

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But what I find is probably the most common “one big thing” is online registration. It seems almost unthinkable that when you go to a doctor’s office you still fill out all your registration forms by hand. And yet, that’s the healthcare world we live in. At the recent Winter Health IT Summit I attended, one heated panel member made the point that while you fill out those medical practice registration forms by hand, you can use your iPhone to place an order for a burrito at the nearest Chipotle.

The fact that Chipotle has more a sophisticated online experience than your typical medical practice is not the subject of this post. For this post, I wanted to describe how practices have solved the online registration problem to date. I’ll also mention how Omedix can help you, but I’ll put that toward the end. So let’s get started. Starting with the least high-tech and going to the most high-tech, how do medical practices handle the registration process?

Paper Forms

The lowest level of registration process is the hallowed paper office form. The patient arrives at the office — possibly with completed forms that have been mailed to them — and either hands them to the office staff or sits down to fill these out by hand with old-fashioned pen or pencil. Because the forms are usually comprehensive, the process typically takes 15 – 30 minutes.

Staff then painstakingly translate the information written on the form into the Practice Management System to fill out information in the patient’s account.

Summary:
The latest 1950′s technology in the modern medical practice.

PDFs on Your Website

One of the questions I was always surprised to get when we first started building websites for medical practices is “Can we put PDF forms on our website?” It turns out that is trivially easy to do, so we don’t even charge extra for it. You just give your webmaster an electronic copy of your form, he converts it to a PDF and uploads it.

The patient can now at least access the form at their leisure. Unfortunately, they still have to fill it out by hand since the PDF is almost never enabled for online submission.

Summary:
The latest 1990′s technology in the modern medical practice.

Fillable PDF’s

About 1 out of 250 times, we run across a practice that has paid someone — in some cases Omedix! — to enable their PDF’s to be fillable. The result is that it’s the same old PDF form, but the patient can now type their answers directly on the form on their computer.

This is a great convenience of course, but there’s a reason the fillable PDF never really took off: The PDF can only be printed. Since it can’t be saved unless you have expensive Adobe Acrobat software, the general concern is that this is going to cause more frustration than it reduces.

Summary:
A rare bird, and there’s a reason it hasn’t thrived in the wild.

Online Registration

At last we enter the 2000′s! With online registration, your patients go to your website and typically log into a patient portal. On the patient portal they fill out “online forms”. This is a version of your old paper registration forms, but rendered online.

The patient fills out one or more forms and presses submit. Your staff then have a separate practice portal to log into to view the submission. The forms don’t integrate with anything, but they do show up in your practice portal. It’s not the perfect solution but it’s better than paper & pencil.

Even though this isn’t the ultimate solution, there are still some horror stories out there. The biggest problem is that some vendors have created an “online forms” solution but haven’t optimized their solution to render the kinds of forms your patient registration forms look like. The result is that the forms look bad. Really bad.

When a patient sees an endless wasteland of 100 sequential fields to fill in, it’s a bit daunting and they revert back to the comfort of paper. The other area where vendors often drop the ball is how the form renders for the practice. Doctors are accustomed to seeing the medical history form a certain way. Staff are accustomed to seeing demographic forms a certain way. When these patterns get interrupted, people’s first reaction is frustration. These issues can be overcome, but be sure to watch out for them.

Summary:
It’s not quite the Apple Store, but your practice can now go electronic with patient registration.

By the way, Omedix can help you with online registration. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to Contact Us.

Online Registration with Integration

This is the exact same solution as described above, but with one beautiful enhancement: some portion of the forms patients have filled out can be sent directly to your Practice Management and/or EHR system.

Summary:
We have online forms and we have backend integration. Life is at last very good.

Omedix can also help you with online registration with integration. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to Contact Us.

Final Thoughts

Amazingly, the story’s not quite over with this blog post. There is a complementary class of solutions to online registration, but we’ll leave that for a future blog post.

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Your Website
Your website is pretty much what you think of when someone says “just visit my website.”  Its most distinguishing feature is that no username or password is required to visit your website.  You simply type in www.YourPracticeWebsite.com, and up pops all the content.  All medical practice websites today have the basics — profiles of the providers, locations with directions, accepted insurances, medical services, and some general information about the practice.  Many medical practice websites also have more interactive features like patient education, online appointment requests, online bill pay, and a blog.  Again, these features do not require a username or password.

Your Website is Primarily about Marketing
Ultimately, your website is really meant to play a marketing role in your practice.  It communicates what you do, it showcases the talents of your doctors, and it encourages people to make an appointment.  To see a good example, check out http://www.azfeet.com.  This entire site is pretty much engineered to help new patients learn about the practice, and when they’re ready, to make an appointment.  The site’s usefulness is measured in terms of how many online appointment requests and how many new patients it generates.

Other clients use their site for patient education or interactivity, but in my experience the overriding goal of the public website is appearing fresh to existing patients and attracting new ones.

Your Patient Portal
A patient portal is a special secure website your patients visit to do online what they used to only be able to do by phone.  This includes things like:

• requesting an appointment
• paying a bill
• requesting an Rx refill
• receiving lab results
• viewing upcoming appointments
• viewing their outstanding balance
• registering for their first visit
• viewing their medical record

The common theme among all these items is that they are specific to a particular patient. The patient portal has to know who you are before it can reveal medical record information to you, or let you renew a prescription.  This is the single-most important difference between a patient portal and a website.  A patient portal knows who you are.  A website doesn’t know anything about you.

Based on this one requirement — that the patient portal has to know who you are — companies like Omedix have created an entire infrastructure to allow patients to create accounts and practices to verify those accounts.  Patients must then identify themselves by logging in with a username and password.  Since they want to see private information about themselves and since this information is “Protected Health Information” as defined by HIPAA, the patient portal has to be secure, log access to the patient’s medical records, and meet several other criteria.

The Relationship Between Your Website and Your Patient Portal
At the end of the day, this is the simplest thing in the world.  The only relationship between your website and your patient portal is that your website should link to your patient portal.  And that’s it!

When Omedix builds websites, we often make a point of promoting the features of the patient portal on the website, but at the end of the day, we’re still just linking to the patient portal.

Summary
- Your website doesn’t know who you are when you visit it.
- Everyone who visits your website has the exact same experience.
- Your patient portal requires the patient to log in.
- Your patient portal starts by replacing phone calls.
- Then it goes on to give an “online healthcare experience”
- The only relationship between your website and your patient portal is a link
- However, you should also use your site to heavily promote the portal

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This is one of the most common questions/concerns that clients have during the design phase of each medical website that Omedix creates. My goal in this post is to address this common concern and explain why our designs may appear “abnormally large” on some home/office computers.

How does screen resolution affect what I see on the web?

The reason our designs are visually larger than many has to do with screen resolution. Currently, there are about 10-15 screen resolutions that are being used in today’s computer screens. Some internet users are viewing the web at very high resolutions (i.e., 1920×1200 pixels, as seen on some of the new MacBook Pro laptop computers). For these users, average-sized images and text on the web appear small. Other users view the web at small resolutions (i.e., 1024×768 pixels). For these users, average-sized images and text on the web appear much larger and fill a larger percentage of their screen’s overall space.

Why are Omedix websites larger than others?

Based on our own observations, many medical practices use computers with smaller resolutions to view the web. So, if you – as an Omedix client – view the shiny new design we’ve created for your practice and are surprised and/or dissatisfied with how large the site appears on your screen, you may want to consider a few things first:

1. We design websites with your patients in mind. According to a January 2010 survey done by w3schools.com, a well-known online resource on web standards, only 20% of internet users are currently browsing the web using 1024×768 pixel screen resolutions. 76% of internet users are browsing the web using screens of larger resolutions. So, just remember, your office computer may display the website somewhat larger, but the chances are that the vast majority of your patients are seeing the website at a normal size.
2. Modern web design is typically larger because screen resolutions have grown larger. Back during the beginning of the millennium, the most common screen resolution was 800×600 pixels. Therefore, websites were designed to cater to this common resolution. If one were to look at a website designed in 2001 on a modern computer screen, the website would likely appear tiny and, in some cases, unreadable.
3. Screen resolutions will continue to grow. The last thing you want is to see developments in computer hardware cause your still-new website to become quickly outdated. If we designed your site to cater to a small screen resolution, you may be looking for another re-design within 2 years. We design your website to keep up with ever-changing technology.
4. Larger websites are more immersive. The web is growing into a medium that can be highly immersive. The simple fact is: larger websites generally make a more profound impact on its viewers. Think of it as the difference between watching your favorite action film on your 32″ LCD television at home versus watching the same movie at the IMAX theater.
5. Users know to scroll. Having a larger website means that more information drops below the “fold” on smaller-resolution screens. Not to worry, though. It is actually part of web users’ common vocabularies to immediately scroll down after loading any website. So, for those people still using a 1024×768 screen resolution, some content may be hidden when a page first loads, but all it takes is a couple flicks of the mouse wheel to find it!

To Sum it All Up…

If a website looks too large on your screen, it probably means that your screen resolution is smaller than average. The overwhelming majority of users will see the site at a normal size. Omedix will design your site in order to be most effective with the highest percentage of people!

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The same holds true for your web browser, though many people don’t treat it that way.

Most people using Internet Explorer aren’t doing so by choice. It’s the default browser packaged with Microsoft Windows, and therefore the easiest to use for the folks without a preference.

And that’s the problem. Given a choice between Coke and Pepsi, most people would prefer one over the other. Why should your web browser be any different?

The only way to truly develop a preference is to experience the alternative. Luckily, all of the major web browsers are available free-of-charge.

With that in mind, here are five reasons to try a browser other than Internet Explorer.

1. HTML5/CSS3 – HTML is the markup language of the Internet, and CSS is used to style said markup into beautiful and functional websites. HTML5 and CSS3 are just the current iterations of each language. Why is this important? Both updates expand functionality, making the web simpler in both development and usage. HTML5/CSS3 are supported in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, but not currently in IE8.
2. User experience – Each web browser brings different elements together to create a unique user experience. Firefox has a great library of add-ons to increase browser functionality (like being able to update Twitter from the address bar). Chrome is extremely fast, and integrates beautifully with Google’s other free services (like syncing my favorites to my Google account across multiple computers). Safari brings Apple’s sense of design and functionality to the PC.
3. Web standards – Put simply, web standards make my job as a developer much easier. It means that when I code a website, it’ll look the same in Firefox as it will in Chrome or Safari. While IE 8 is much better in the standards department, it still has some large shortcomings (see reason #1). With IE 9, Microsoft has promised to embrace web standards even further. But if history is any indicator, other browsers will be moving on to something bigger and better by the time Microsoft is close to catching up. As IE’s market share continues to drop, users could continue to find themselves on the outside looking in.
4. Security – This is mostly for the 17% of you (according to some metrics) still using IE 6, a browser first released in 2001! I’m assuming that you’re forced to use IE 6 at work or in some other controlled environment where people are overly concerned about security or support for legacy software. Ironically, because of its age and dwindling support, IE 6 is the least secure of any major browser. Please upgrade, even if it’s to IE 7 or 8.
5. The Upgrade Process – One of the nice things about using any IE alternative is that the browser will notify you as soon as there’s an available update. It’s more convenient than IE’s updates, which are pushed through the Windows patching system.  People aren’t great at updating Windows, especially on older operating systems like XP. On top of that, IE’s development cycle is tied to OS releases, which is part of the reason IE is continually behind the curve in terms of new functionality.

Hopefully you’ve found at least one reason to test a new browser. Don’t worry, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you adapt.

Remember that you can run multiple browsers on your computer, meaning that you can test drive another browser without messing up IE. That way, in the event that IE remains your favorite browser, you can easily transition back.

But I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.

Here are links to our two favorite browsers. Download them for free and try them out:

• Firefox
• Chrome

And if you’re feeling loyal, check out the IE 9 Beta.

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Thankfully, we are here to help. At the beginning of every website project, we schedule a meeting to develop a plan for your project. Before we even start discussing the specific pages or design elements, we ask “What are your goals for this site?”

Common Goals include:

• Attracting new patients
• Streamlining administrative tasks
• Being a good educational resource for patients
• Building the credibility of the practice

All of the content on the site should help you to achieve one or more of your business goals for the site. Once the goals are identified, and the pages are identified, it is time to start writing the content – and time to start asking more questions.

As you go through the pages of text, it is important to ask the following questions about every page:

• How does this page contribute to the user experience of the site?
• Should this content inspire action from the user, and if so, is is clear what action they should take?
• What additional information will the user be interested in after looking at this page? Is it is easy to find that information?

All of this may sound overwhelming (its bad enough to think about writing all of the content for a website!), but it really can be a painless process. And the good news is, you will not have to write any more content than what is really needed to achieve your business goals.

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All the clients also commented about how nice it was to work with a firm that specialized in medical practices, because we knew what we were doing and they didn’t have to give us a lot of explanations about what they wanted. People were also struck by how the designer was able to produce “exactly what they wanted but hadn’t been able to envision themselves.”  I received many comments about how organized and easy the process was.

Once the site was launched, several of our clients commented that they had waited too long to get a professional firm to create their website. They finally had a site that they were proud of, represented the quality of their practice, and that could provide useful tools and information to patients. One of our clients commented on the impact that a great site was having in terms of their ability to recruit and attract top talent, as they now had an online presence that presented the right impression of who they are.  One particularly successful project noted that their conversion rates – the number of clicks on their site divided by the number of appointment requests from new patients coming through the web – had quadrupled since the launch of their site.

Overall, it was wonderful for all of us get such wonderful feedback from our clients.

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