EyeWorld Asia-Pacific September 2019 Issue

FEATURE 22 EWAP SEPTEMBER 2019 I ntegrating software like electronic health records (EHR), scheduling tools, and other technologies can help doctors improve the overall experience for patients and œvwVi ivwVˆi˜VÞ vœÀ ̅iˆÀ ÃÌ>vv and themselves. Practice perspective John Pinto spoke about his observations of the evolution of EHR. “I visit practices all over the country and the world, see what’s available and being used in real time, and I listen to what staff and providers say about it,” he said. “Electronic health records are the most prominent shift in the last decade to 15 years. We’ve gone from about a 5% utilization to about a 95% utilization.” EHR have a lot of positive attributes, Mr. Pinto said, and they make for more complete and legible records. EHR also make it easier to pass the records back and forth among collaborators inside and out of practices. Additionally, they can help free Õ« «…ÞÈV> ë>Vi ˆ˜ œvwVià ܅iÀi records used to be stored. Mr. Pinto noted that there is still some untapped potential with EHR, like improving care pathways, assessing provider competency, looking at utilization, and trying to optimize coding. “Unfortunately, a lot of the potential of gathering and wˆ˜} ˆ˜ > ̅i wi`à QˆÃ ˜œÌ Liˆ˜} recognized], and the profession is still not using that data for what it could do,” he said. Mr. Pinto noted the differences he sees among practices in how dry eye is treated, in utilization of YAG postop, and in the care pathway applied to decide ܅i̅iÀ >˜ " / œÀ ۈÃÕ> wi` ˆÃ appropriate. He added that none of these systems presently have built-in algorithms to report to providers how they’re doing compared to colleagues to apply clinical benchmarks. Precious few practices use this digitized data to inform their own pathways, he said. “I would say that the profession has gotten over the hump,” Mr. Pinto said. “It used to be that every practice was throwing rocks at its EHR vendor and unhappy with the cost or the slowdown in the pace of patients.” Clearly, however, we’re still at baby steps for extracting the value for the cost of these systems, he added, and not just the cost for the vendor but also the staff cost. For example, Mr. Pinto said that the average ophthalmologist using EHR is spending an extra 500 hours a year in lay labor to provide scribing and other services. Software to help improve surgery and practice experience by Ellen Stodola EyeWorld Senior Staff Writer / Meetings Editor Contact information Hovanesian: drhovanesian@harvardeye.com Pinto: pintoinc@aol.com 6JKU CTVKENG QTKIKPCNN[ CRRGCTGF KP VJG /C[ KUUWG QH EyeWorld . It has been UNKIJVN[ OQFKƂGF CPF CRRGCTU JGTG YKVJ RGTOKUUKQP HTQO VJG #5%45 1RJVJCNOKE Services Corp. AT A GLANCE • EHR can help in a number of ways, including providing more complete and legible records. • EHR make it easier to pass records among collaborators inside and outside practices and ease the transfer of records to others. • There are a number of products available to help with key activities like patient education and appointment reminders.