Senior Living Healthcare Consulting

Should CCHIT Influence Your EHR Decision

2009-03-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

By: Don Fornes
don@softwareadvice.com (415) 449-0532

CCHIT promotes that through their certification process, the organization “sets the bar for EHR products.” We agree. However, we question if that bar has been set too high relative to most ambulatory care organizations’ current requirements and IT capabilities. Even if a majority of EHR vendors achieve certification, will physicians follow suite by adopting the functionality specified in the CCHIT criteria?

As we review the list of CCHIT Certified EHRs, we recognize many great software products. We see great benefit to the features specified by CCHIT. However, we can’t help but wonder how long it will take for the traditionally “late adopter” physician market to accept and implement the requirements specified by CCHIT’s technologically savvy Commission.

So, in the interest of serving our provider audience, here are five key takeaways for use in determining CCHIT’s role in your EHR selection:

Review the CCHIT criteria yourself and determine the relevance of each to your ideal workflow. The criteria are well defined, so even if you do not need every capability, you could select a subset for use in evaluating EHRs for your practice.

Understand the binary nature of CCHIT certification. If an EHR does not fully address each of the CCHIT requirements, it will not be certified. Therefore recognize that there are many good EHRs that may not achieve certification, but may still meet your requirements. Consider the requirements of your specialty. If you need EHR capabilities specific to your segment of medicine, realize that CCHIT does not yet cover specialties. You have to evaluate specialty requirements on your own.

Do your homework on other critical evaluation criteria that fall outside CCHIT, including: ease-of-use, customer satisfaction and vendor viability. CCHIT is very clear that these due diligence items are the buyer’s responsibility.

Understand the biases of both CCHIT proponents and detractors. It is natural for these industry players to have strong opinions, just be sure to put them in context, do your own research, and understand that the ultimate decision is yours.

http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/medical/should-cchit-influence-your-ehr-selection/

Welcome to the future of nursing homes

2009-02-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

By WARREN WOLFE, Star Tribune
February 24, 2009

http://www.startribune.com/local/east/40261707.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciatkEP7DhUsr

Arnold Gardner will start his day in a new place today, a "neighborhood'' where bright sunlight streams down wide hallways. A specially trained aide will be on hand to help him dress, to cook his breakfast to order, do his laundry and lead a meeting where he and his neighbors choose rituals such as mealtimes and bedtimes.

It's as close to the nursing home of the future as you can find in Minnesota.
Gone are the uniform wake-up times and bedtimes, the set meal hours and even rigidly-defined roles for the staff.

Gardner is a resident of the new Sholom Home East, one of two nursing homes opening this week in the Twin Cities that represent the vanguard of "resident-centered care.'' It's an approach that marries building design, staff training and technology to support a philosophy that older people will live healthier, more rewarding lives when they retain a much control as possible over their own lives.

The newest example opened Tuesday in St. Paul. At 7:30 a.m., Gardner and 68 fellow residents of Sholom Home East near the State Fairgrounds began boarding buses, moving six miles south to a new $59 million campus off W. 7th Street overlooking the Mississippi River.

The next one starts today at 10 a.m. in Oak Park Heights. Mavis Riegel, 93 -- the first resident nine years ago of a senior apartment at Boutwells Landing -- will be rolled in her wheelchair across a red carpet to become the first resident of a new $30 million nursing home on the expanding campus operated by Presbyterian Homes and Services.

Both nursing homes have opened at a time when tight finances and stiff competition have forced 62 Minnesota nursing homes to close since 2000. A 63rd -- in Two Harbors, Minn., -- announced last week that it will close, too.

"There is so much difficulty in the [nursing home] industry," said Gayle Kvenvold, CEO of the nursing home trade group Aging Services of Minnesota.

"These two new homes really show that it's possible to shift from the old medical approach to a much more dignified, empowering, person-centered approach to nursing home care."

While different, the two homes share many features that have come to mark the "culture change movement" taking root in most states.

Resident life will revolve around "neighborhoods'' -- clusters of 10 rooms at Sholom and 12 to 14 at Boutwells. Aides will serve only one neighborhood, so staff and residents will get to know each other as friends.

Call lights still remain outside the rooms because government rules require them. But there will be no more loudspeaker announcements or ringing bells; aides and nurses will answer pagers, and will be able to talk with residents or co-workers from anywhere in the building. Records now are kept electronically.

Each home is part of a broader "campus" that offers a range of housing -- from independent-living apartments to end-of-life care -- and incorporates on-site amenities such as banks, beauty salons, auditoriums for public events, meeting rooms for community groups, adult day care, child day care, a doctor's office, dental and foot care, fitness centers, chapels, libraries, personal computers and Wi-Fi connections.

There are differences. Sholom provides kosher meals and has guest rooms for visitors. Boutwells has luxury nursing home suites, including two in which a well spouse could live with a nursing home resident.

"The nursing home of the future? Well, it's close, but that's an evolving target," said Barb Ruppe, administrator of Sholom East. "We've built so we can keep evolving as new ideas, new training and new technology come on line."

Donations and training

Two key factors separate the homes from most others: donated money and a commitment to continuous staff training.

"We couldn't have a building this beautiful and this functional without very, very generous help from the community," said Bruce Kahn, CEO of Sholom Community Alliance, which operates various levels of senior housing in the Twin Cities.

Of the $59 million cost of the Rossy and Richard Shaller Family Sholom East Campus, organizers raised about $38 million from donations. The complex includes the 92-bed nursing home, a 66-bed assisted living facility that opens March 1 and a 45-unit subsidizied apartment building that opened in May.

At Boutwells Landing, the 108-bed nursing home's $30 million cost included about $10 million in donations.

"You can't build a state-of-the-art nursing home based on the payments you get from government programs," which finance the care for about two-thirds of nursing home residents, said Dan Lindh, CEO of Presbyterian Homes. "Until we change the way we finance long-term care, we'll have to depend on the vision and generosity of benefactors."

At Sholom East, aides and nurses have been practicing living in neighborhoods for more than a year, administrator Ruppe said.

Boutwells has taken a different approach. Financed in part with $5.5 million in state grants, Presbyterian Homes and Minneapolis Community & Technical College have developed a three-year training program for certified nursing aides that could be adopted by other facilities around the country.

"When we advertised for staff, we had 721 applications," said administrator Laura Cognetta. "The training shows how much we value staff, and their response shows how much they want to change the way we care for our moms and dads."

Said CEO Lindh, "What's really gratifying is to literally create a new place with new concepts from the ground up. We're building on what others have done and we're pushing the envelope just a little bit farther."

'I'm gonna like it here'

At Sholom, Gardner was settling into his new room, testing out his new bed and chair, and gazing fondly at his view of J.R. Mac's Grill and Pub, where he and his late wife used to eat.
"Can't tell for sure until I taste the food," Gardner, a retired salesman, cracked with one of scores of volunteers roaming the home helping residents get settled. "But my guess, I'm gonna like it here."

Warren Wolfe • 612-673-7253

Advanced Technologies in Patient Care Settings

2008-11-10T05:17:00.000-08:00

The innovative referral management system and discharge referral system online healthcare software solutions accelerate and automate long-term care referral placement, discharge planning, electronic medical records management, and patient referral tracking–all within HIPAA guidelines.

With online healthcare software solutions, hospitals and long-term care providers no longer must rely on inefficient fax-and-paper-based discharge planning, referral management, and medical records storage and archiving.

A rapidly growing list of delighted long-term care providers, hospitals and other healthcare organizations are benefiting from patient placement systems and online discharge planning systems. These innovative online healthcare software solutions include online fax servers, Web-based patient tracking systems and anytime electronic medical records management.

Patient placement systems fast, simple online healthcare software systems can boost your referral patient intakes, decrease patient length of stay, increase profits, and improve strategic operations. And you can trash that fax machine, once and for all.

Your hospital, long-term care facility or other healthcare organization also will enhance compliance with HIPAA guidelines with secure online software for patient tracking, discharge planning and electronic medical records management that ensures patient privacy.

Dynamic Bedside Point of Care Technology: IntelliDOT

2008-09-23T06:57:00.001-07:00

The lightweight, wireless IntelliDOT handheld device enables nurses to perform safety checks and safely administer medications at the bedside with just one hand. As such, the system helps hospitals meet Joint Commission standards by positively identifying patients. Best of all, the IntelliDOT System lets caregivers verify the five rights of medication management – right medication, right dose, right route, right patient, right time – easily, quickly and comprehensively at the bedside.

The IntelliDOT charting link has eliminated the time nurses spend entering medication administration into computers, which enables nurses to spend more time with patients.

"The IntelliDOT and EPIC interface with Boston WorkStation works very well," said Jay Scherler, Vice President, Business and Support Services at Providence Healthcare Network. "In fact, one of the key selling points of IntelliDOT was that it could seamlessly chart back to our EPIC MAR."

Scherler was especially impressed with the implementation of IntelliDOT BMA. "I can't imagine a cleaner install than what we had," said Scherler. "It was one of the smoothest implementations I've ever experienced. I would encourage anyone on the fence waiting for a barcode medication administration system to consider IntelliDOT."

By simply scanning a patient wristband, the IntelliDOT System handheld device guides nurses through all required tasks and documentation for a patient. Information is automatically sent via clear, concise, organized and logical commands directly into the caregiver’s hand at the point-of-care. IntelliDOT organizes workflow at the bedside while automatically queuing critical tasks and displaying key information. What's more, nurses can document their work while they are working without additional computer log-ins.

"We've given well over a million medication doses using IntelliDOT BMA and we know for a fact that it's safer," said Bill Arrington, Director of Pharmacy at Stillwater Medical Center. "We did a post-implementation study and our medication error rate went to zero."

IntelliDOT Corporation
13520 Evening Creek Drive North
Suite 400
San Diego, CA 92128
(858) 746 3100

PCMA on E-Prescribing: 'Each Year We Wait, More People Die'

2008-09-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

Calling e-prescribing the most important issue to patients in the current Medicare debate, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) has unveiled a new TV ad urging policy-makers to require the use of electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) in Medicare "before more people die."

The new ad, featuring a woman mourning at a gravesite, highlights the fact that more than 7,000 people die every year because of medication errors.

The ad is a wake up call to refocus the Medicare debate on patients, not just the providers who serve them. From a patient's perspective, e-prescribing is by far the most important issue in the current Medicare debate because it could save their life or the life of someone they love.

E-prescribing saves lives and money.

MTBC
Medical Transcription Billing, Corp.
7 Clyde Road
Somerset, NJ 08873
Call: 1-866-266-MTBC (6822)

Vocollect Healthcare Systems New Customer: Highlands at Wyomissing

2008-08-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Vocollect Healthcare Systems, Inc.announces that The Highlands at Wyomissing, a continuing care retirementcommunity located in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, will deploy AccuNurse(R) voice-assisted care and take quality of care to new levels by enabling more proactive care and providing more time for direct resident care.

The Highlands will utilize voice-assisted care to enable dynamic, personalized, and interactive care throughout its nursing care program -shift-to-shift and caregiver-to-caregiver. By giving caregivers the capabilityto access resident care needs on-demand, complete paperwork simply by talking, and enhance care-team collaboration with Silent Paging(TM), The Highlands expects to achieve numerous performance gains.

According to Danielle Hammer, NHA, director of health services of The Highlands at Wyomissing, "We're always on the lookout for innovative ways totake quality of care to the next level, and technology is a key part of our strategic focus to help continuously improve resident care outcomes. AccuNurse is a one-of-a-kind solution that will enable us to achieve our goals of responding to resident needs in a timely way, maintaining a line of communication between our care team and enabling real-time flexibility so we can adapt to resident care needs on a daily basis - or even minute-by-minute,if necessary. With AccuNurse, we will not only improve outcomes, but will doso with dignity toward our residents, accuracy in our documentation, and accountability for the care we deliver 24x7 to all residents across all disciplines. We see voice-assisted care as a core component of achieving and maintaining a high standard of excellence throughout our community."

About Vocollect Healthcare Systems AccuNurse voice-assisted care from Vocollect Healthcare Systems, Inc. makes it easy for healthcare professionals to retrieve care needs on-demand,chart activities as they are completed, and Silent Page each other for help. Organizations using AccuNurse benefit from lower operating costs, maximized reimbursements, and improved quality of care. Vocollect Healthcare Systems is a subsidiary of Vocollect, Inc., the global leader in voice technology and delivering performance improvements in productivity, accuracy, cost reduction and worker satisfaction for mobile employees on six continents.

Original Article Here: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-25-2008/0004872874&EDATE=

MediVoice Partners With VisionTree: Voice ePrescribing Solution

2008-08-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., July 24 /PRNewswire/ — MediVoice(R), LLC, the world’s first mobile voice-activation solution for e-Health and e-Prescribing, has formed a strategic partnership with VisionTree(R), a leading provider of interactive, web-based, patient-centered health record management and provider communication systems to integrate and market its mobile voice-activation solution with the VisionTree Optimal Care(TM) (VTOC) system.

“MediVoice is pleased to develop a strategic partnership with VisionTree. We are impressed with their web-based technology and the value it brings to physicians and patients,” said Anthony Milone, MediVoice, LLC, Board Member and Managing Director.VisionTree customers will be able to utilize MediVoice’s software platform to access the SureScripts(R) network for e-Prescribing and e-Health management.

MediVoice provides the world’s first commercially available mobile voice-activated e-healthcare solution. MediVoice utilizes the most innovative technology in speech solutions. It allows healthcare professionals to voice-activate electronic prescriptions, electronic medical records, and a wide variety of e-health services.

The use of e-Prescribing has been shown to reduce medical errors, reduce medical and administrative costs, and improve the efficiency and documentation of the medication prescription process.Martin Pellinat, CEO of VisionTree Software, said “The VisionTree Optimal Care(TM) (VTOC) platform is used by over 70 leading academic and community sites around the country for web-based patient communication and data management. With the ability for physicians to launch a voice-activated e-Prescribing solution, we have expanded the VTOC patient management system to not only include the patient’s health record, e-communication and disease management, but also include the ability for physicians to deliver the highest level of efficiency and quality care to their patients.”

Read original article here: http://www.advisemed.com/medivoicer-partners-with-visiontreer-to-integrate-its-voice-activated-e-prescribing-solution-into-visiontrees-vtoctm-web-based-patient-management-system.html

AssistMed Selected by North Dakota Agency to Provide Electronic Medical Records System

2008-08-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, Aug 20, 2008 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- AssistMed, Inc. today announced it has been selected by The North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide an agency-wide electronic medical records (EMR) system. Terms were not disclosed.

The system will provide healthcare professionals with state-of-the art capabilities, including prescription and pharmacy inventory tracking, the ability to monitor movements of inmates throughout the facilities, flexible bed assignment, and an EMR-integrated dental application. In addition, AssistMed's system offers speech recognition processing technology and auto-formatting and auto-correction of clinical documents.

"The selection of AssistMed's system follows an extensive evaluation of our technology and its features, including its Web-based applications and other capabilities that we demonstrated onsite to showcase the system's functionality -- as well as favorable feedback from existing users," said Leonardo Berezovsky, M.D., chairman and chief executive officer of AssistMed, Inc.

For full article click logo:

Healthcare Provider Simplifies Billing With Coding Interface

2008-08-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

For any business, receiving payments earlier rather than later makes a difference in the bottom line. For healthcare facilities relying on a myriad of insurance companies and government programs for reimbursement for patient treatment, a solution that streamlines the billing system can quickly pay for itself.

A 350-bed private, not-for-profit healthcare service provider in Massachusetts was experiencing delays in getting billing information to the parties responsible for reimbursing the hospital. The hospital uses advanced technological tools, including EMRs (electronic medical records), CPOE (computerized physician order entry), PCS (patient care system/nursing documentation), and BMV (bedside medication verification).

The vast amount of information that passes through the hospital's facilities, including the records of every patient (physician observations, prescription history, diagnoses, procedures performed, tracking of reactions to medications, etc.), must be converted into a universally recognized set of classifications, or codes. Medical coding has become the primary means by which insurance companies determine whom to reimburse for medical procedures and in what amounts.

The provider's healthcare information system relies on a combination of MEDITECH healthcare information system, which manages patient information and medical records; 3M medical encoding software; ProMed Scanning from BizTech Healthcare Solutions to scan medical records; and Valco Data Systems to archive the medical records on the back end.

Until recently, the hospital's medical encoding personnel would have to access patient record information in each of these systems individually in order to gain the patient data necessary to code and abstract a single patient's record.

The hospital's emergency department coding process was even more complicated because the hospital's HIM (health information management) staff was responsible for entering most of the charges generated there. Plus, the integration between the MEDITECH and 3M systems meant information had to be batch processed overnight, allowing the MEDITECH information to pass through the 3M software before it could be encoded, extending the coding and billing schedule.

Original Article: HERE

Integrated Solutions

http://www.integratedsolutionsmag.com/

Misys Optimum Video

2008-08-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

Electronic Medical Record Technology

Cerner makes its moves beyond software

2008-07-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

The North Kansas City-based company is vaulting beyond computer software in three key areas:

--Connecting hospital medical devices to patient electronic medical records to improve safety and efficiency.

--Coordinating health benefits for other companies to help them cut costs, boost workers' health and raise productivity.

--Crunching life science data to help determine the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical treatment plans.

These endeavors occupy about 635 Cerner employees, a small part of the company's more than 7,600 workers around the globe, including more than 4,800 in the Kansas City area.

But the employee numbers belie the significance that Cerner attaches to these ventures.

"We are transforming ourselves from an IT company to a health-care company," Cerner president Trace Devanny said recently. "Extending our capability beyond information technology flow to that of the entire health-care process is a natural extension of our business."

Since its founding in 1979, Cerner has pushed the envelope of change. With the zeal of a cyber-missionary, it has sought to convince hospitals, doctors and other health providers to dump paper records and replace them with Cerner software. Despite frequent stock gyrations, steadily growing business testifies to Cerner's success. The company logged $1.52 billion in revenue last year, an increase of 10 percent from the previous year.

Original Article Posted HERE

Revolutionizing In-house Television for Retirement Communities

2008-06-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

Touchtown TV+ is a passive system, delivering community information to viewers on televisions, websites and print. It gives communities the power to connect with all the people they care about - residents, family members and prospects - even if those people are not physically in the building or campus.

Touchtown TV+ is not simply a television slide show. It lets a community create and deliver a professional quality channel automatically, generating the final result from a database of local information. The unique value of TV+ derives from its ability to unify communications throughout a retirement community, ensuring complete, consistent and up-to-date information delivered throughout the community.

Touchtown Inc.
215 Allegheny Avenue
Oakmont, PA 15139
Phone: 412-826-0460
Web: http://www.touchtown.tv/
Email: info@touchtown.us

Internet Faxing: Extended Healthcare Technology

2008-06-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

http://internetfaxsolution.com/

Integrate your paperless system seamlessly with your HealthMEDX EMR Software Technology.

Sending, receiving, and filing faxes is central to managing any healthcare organization. But while other systems and requirements — especially HIPAA-mandated security issues--have evolved, fax technology has hardly changed since the 1980s.

Sfax provides the secure transfer of patient health information (PHI), a feature virtually nonexistent with manual faxing. The system is an easy-to-deploy, scaleable solution that turns faxing into a paperless operation by tracking, routing and storing electronic faxes on a HIPAA-ready, Internet-based platform.

Sfax means Save – Time and Money

Sfax can save healthcare organizations 95% of the time and 80% of the cost of manual faxing. A simple three page fax costs upwards of $1.20 or over 40 cents per page which includes paper, toner, phone line and labor. The average 3 page fax takes more than 5 minutes to completely process. Multiply that times 1,000 faxes per month and you can see how it negatively affects your bottom line. With Sfax all the costs of manual faxing are eliminated—equipment, paper, ink/toner, dedicated phone line, and labor. All you need to use Sfax is a computer with an Internet connection.

Key Features

· Provides a HIPAA ready platform that meets or exceeds requirements
· Online Storage for 365 days – never lose another fax
· Auto log and audit trail of all faxes – record keeping made easy
· Index and Search – Find a fax in a split second
· Custom cover pages – saves time, every time
· Import address books – easy look up fax numbers
· Toll free numbers – routes faxes to the right person and saves time
· Export to document mgmt or EMR – no more scanning – think paperless
· Sfax means Secure - Full HIPAA security

HIPAA mandates strict security to keep patient information private. Sfax meets or exceeds the most stringent HIPAA security standards to keep you in compliance.

Cost Reductions: Use Information Technology

2008-05-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

Because of the massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, long term healthcare facilities must learn to work smart. One step is to use information technology to improve management of staff, inventory, quality and reimbursement. Such attention can create considerable cost reduction helping to address all the impending reduction in revenue. Following are some of the areas that need to be reviewed in light of these necessary changes:

* Improved employee satisfaction and retention and reduction of temporary help
* Reduced cost through improved efficiency in staffing
* Elimination of unnecessary overtime
* Stronger staff education at the workplace
* Improved purchasing practices
* Movement from paper full to paper free electronic medical records

Here is how:

Human Resources

* Improved employee satisfaction and retention and reduction of temporary help through a web-based staff scheduling program that allows employees to select the various shifts that they are going to work or bid on. It also would determine the exact cost of employees, both FTEs and temporary.

* Reduced cost through improved efficiency in staffing utilizing staffing tools that enable prospective management and real time communication between staffing clerks and management with regard to ppd staffing, overtime and agency use.

* Elimination of unnecessary overtime generated by early and late time clock punches by linking nursing home specific scheduling to time clock management.

* In addition, this also ties into distance learning training for CNAs, LPNs and RNs. The cost reduction in this area is approximately ¾ less than the facilities are doing now.

Inventory Control

* Inventory control in a nursing home environment is massive in nature. Considering all the items and material needed to maintain an operation, the cost must go into the thousands of dollars.

* Many vendors will supply you with the complete inventory of their product lines so there is nothing that you would have to re-key. Tying this into purchasing makes this an automated process and has a great deal to do with reducing costs.

Resident (Reimbursement) Acuities Levels.

Because the reimbursement is based in the skilled facility on the acuity levels of the resident, there are more cases where these figures can be undercoded, therefore leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

With an analytical program, this area can be completely resolved and reimbursement can be improved dramatically.

Ancillary Areas

Ancillary areas, which would include forms and paper reporting, could realize substantial savings by adopting a document retrieval solution.

Application, server and desktop virtualization can significantly reduce IT costs.
It’s been our experience over the past ten years to be able to say that costs can be controlled internally primarily because of the fixed costs of the Medicare and Medicaid systems.

Edward Koscic & Associates
21887 Jonathan Drive, Suite 333
Strongsville STATE: Ohio ZIP: 44149
440-846-1120 FAX: 440-846-0959 E-mail: eek@go2guy.us

http://www.go2guy.us/

Our firm has conducted hundreds of needs investigations for computer hardware and software acquisitions, a large percent in the healthcare field. We have had experience with some of the top specialists in the computer industry. We have associates in fifty states dealing with pen computing to main frames and databases to wide area networks. We have researched the ASP new wave of software distribution for the twenty-first century and have developed an intuitive database of all software vendors that sell software to the LTHC industry.

HealthMEDX Partners With Silverchair Learning Systems

2008-03-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- HealthMEDX, Inc. (HMX), the leading provider of Web-based information system solutions for the extended care market, has partnered with Silverchair Learning Systems to offer Silverchair's powerful eLearning solutions to its customers.

Silverchair's Learning Management System is a highly effective, efficient, and affordable turn-key learning program that delivers, tracks, and reports on educational programs for senior care organizations. The program provides a complete curriculum of in-service and regulatory courses required by CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), as well as important resident care topics that specifically address the needs of long-term care providers and their employees. The system can also be customized for an organization to include material specific to its facility/facilities.

"HealthMEDX consistently seeks partnerships that will benefit our customers and complement our services," says Charlie Daniels, President of HealthMEDX, Inc. "We're very excited to work with Silverchair Learning and the value this partnership brings to the industry."
"Silverchair is excited to partner with HealthMEDX," says Mike Mutka, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Silverchair Learning Systems. "They share our vision of improving senior care through innovative, effective use of technology. This partnership will allow senior care organizations to positively affect the lives of their residents in new and ground-breaking ways."

About HealthMEDX, Inc.

HealthMEDX, Inc. (HMX), a privately owned company based in southwest Missouri, is the industry leader of integrated software solutions for the extended care market. HMX's CareMEDX product suite is the only Web-based solution that addresses the needs of long-term care, home care and rehab. The depth of services positions HMX as a leading innovator in the health information technology community. CareMEDX product offerings are unsurpassed, featuring the clinical electronic medical record (EMR), census management, financial, analytics, dashboard, workflow and portal. At HMX we value our relationships with our customers, employees and partners. We are committed to deliver lasting value to help improve quality of care, maximize productivity, support business growth, and manage risk.

To learn more about CareMEDX benefits, call 877-875-1200 or visit http://www.healthmedx.com/.

About Silverchair Learning Systems

Silverchair Learning Systems works with senior care leaders who want to improve the training process in their organizations. Silverchair offers a user-friendly online training solution that improves compliance and eliminates record keeping headaches, while saving time and money. We make online training successful with easy set-up, ease of use, simple tracking, and educationally-rich yet fun courses. Using this system provides peace of mind and confidence. http://www.silverchairlearning.com/

Contact:
Mike Mutka
Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing
Silverchair Learning Systems
(866) 805-7575, x. 1813
mmutka@silverchairlearning.com

Website: http://www.healthmedx.com/

Website: www.silverchairlearning.com/

From PR Newswire

http://sev.prnewswire.com/health-care-hospitals/20080324/DC1738824032008-1.html

Find Info Tech - Information Technology Resource

2008-02-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.findinfotech.com/company.htm

Our goal is to exceed your expectations.

Edward Koscic & Associates provides intelligence to healthcare organizations who are searching for software solutions. In today's challenging world of electronic medical records and increased reporting and scrutiny from government agencies, you need a champion who is on YOUR side.

Let FindInfoTech show you the way through the jungle of advertising and sales promises. Successful implementation of a software solution involves every area of your organization. From pre-selection planning through the "go live" date and beyond, let the experts assist you with the mechanics of the operation and allow your staff to do what they were trained and hired to do...care for residents and/or patients.

SERVICES
Edward Koscic and Associates, and FindInfoTech, recognizes the critical interrelationship between the human and the IT infrastructure. Our scope of services is applicable to providers of senior housing and health care as well as other organizations in a variety of health care industries. Our discovery, training, and implementation services equip managers with the critical knowledge and skills to manage the change in their information tools.

Excellence Achievement Award - Extended Care Technology

2008-02-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

*Edward Koscic & Associates, LLC

440.846.1120

http://www.go2guy.us/

Strongsville, OH , The professional consulting firm of Edward Koscic and Associates has issued its highest award for excellence to three leading independent software vendors (ISVs) specializing in clinical applications for health care:

Rohnert Park, California-based Chartware, Inc. (http://www.chartware.com/) for its revolutionary electronic medical record (EMR) for physician practices;

Montreal, Quebec-based VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corporation (http://www.visualmedsolutions.com) for its EMR for hospitals

Ozark, Missouri-based HealthMEDX (http://www.healthmedx.com/) for its knowledge management-based clinical application for nursing homes and home health providers.

“This is our highest award for achievement and excellence,” commented Mr. Edward Koscic, president and founder of Edward Koscic and Associates, “recognizing the essential qualities of successful software applications, the character of each company and its management, their experience in the development of healthcare software solutions, the employment of state of the art technology, the execution & performance of their respective applications, and what their customers say about them.”

ChartWare, Inc. is a physician-founded private company dedicated to improving patient care and professional quality of life for health care providers. The company was co-founded by Daniel Essin, MD and David Tully-Smith MD, PhD, who both pioneered early research on electronic medical records beginning in 1984. Since its incorporation in 1995 ChartWare has been delivering clinical documentation software that is known for its elegant functionality and ease of use. Initial installations of the company's flagship product were in family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics and cardiology. Today, ChartWare is operational in over 40 states and has been successfully implemented in more than 20 clinical specialties. “This is the best kind of award to have because it comes from experienced consultants whose success depends on making sure the systems they recommend to physicians are the best they can find,” says ChartWare CEO, David Tully-Smith MD. “ChartWare is the only electronic medical record system suitable for both hospitals and small practices to be awarded five stars by Family Practice Management, journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians.”

VisualMED Clinical Solutions Corporation is a publicly-traded marketer of state-of-the-art Clinical Information Systems (CIS) based on a robust core computer physician order entry (CPOE) engine conceived by clinicians and integrated within a comprehensive patient electronic medical record. It is a scaleable enterprise-wide Electronic Medical Record with CPOE decision support at its core whose development is based on 10 years of experience with its first generation physician order entry system. Designed by clinicians with more than 20 years hands-on experience in the tertiary care environment, the VisualMED Clinical System is modular in concept and responds to the unique needs of each of the medical and surgical specialties. “The selection of these three systems by Ed Koscic & Associates is a formal recognition of a new generation of comprehensive, cost-effective and easily deployed systems,” says VisualMED Chairman Gerard Dab. “It is this new generation that will provide alternatives to the cumbersome multi-year implementations of current vendors.”

HealthMEDX, Inc. (HMX) develops and markets CareMEDX, a knowledge-centered solution, which enables providers to leverage data, knowledge, and experience to improve quality of care while increasing overall efficiency. Specializing in solutions for the extended care market, HMX’s product suite offers business monitoring, integrated resident or patient management, scheduling, clinical, point of care, wireless, and financial solutions with a real-time digital dashboard. “Our mission is to bring Knowledge Management Solutions to healthcare clients that will increase productivity and improve overall efficiency,” says Charlie Daniels, President and co-founder of HealthMEDX. “Through our integrated Enterprise Information System, we strive to provide exceptional quality at a reasonable price with unsurpassed service. We are honored to receive this recognition for excellence from a firm of professionals has the responsibility to help providers get IT right.”

About Edward Koscic and Associates (http://www.go2guy.us/)

Supported by a constantly-growing database that evaluates hundreds of health care-focused clinical, financial, and payroll applications, Edward Koscic and Associates, the Go2Guy, delivers information and consulting services to help clients reduce the expense and frustration of selecting and implementing enterprise-class software. With more than fifteen years of experience, the firm provides intelligence to healthcare organizations searching for software solutions.

In today's challenging world of electronic medical records and increased reporting and scrutiny from government agencies, providers need a champion on their side. From pre-selection planning through the "go-live" date and beyond, Ed and his associates assist providers with the mechanics of the operation and allow provider staff to do what they were trained and hired to do...care for residents and/or patients.