Practice Fusion provides a customizable EHR fit for family medicine practices. Track patient health with customizable flowsheets and coordinate care with the largest lab, imaging, pharmacy and referral ecosystem. Your ability to customize to your specific practice workflow makes Practice Fusion a great choice for any internal medicine practice.
Lynn McCallum, MD
A Practice Fusion user since 2009, Dr. Lynn McCallum manages her family practice completely paperless in Redding, California.
Dr. McCallum’s practice:
“We are a full service family practice office in Northern California, with one physician, one nurse practitioner, two back office personnel, a front desk receptionist and a biller. We see all ages of patients and do low risk obstetrics, pediatrics with immunizations, well women and well male exams, general family practice visits and in-office procedures including vasectomy, skin biopsies, circumcisions, lacerations, etc.”
Selecting and implementing Practice Fusion:
“I had been looking at getting an EHR system for several years but was thwarted by the high upfront cost and the monthly cost of maintenance, as well as the steep learning curve and training required to get the staff up to speed. I simply could not justify the expense or for that matter, afford the average cost of the usual self contained EHR.”
“As well, there is the headache of ensuring the data is secure and backed up. I had expected that a better way to solve all these problems would be to have an internet based EHR, but had not seen anything that looked feasible or affordable, until I was sent some notes from a consultant that was using Practice Fusion, and I had to take a look. I was immediately impressed by how easy the process was to get set up and how intuitive the interface is to use. And of course, this EHR was definitely in my price range!”
“I signed on and set up our practice, and began using it to make notes on my patients. The staff had no trouble learning to use the program.”
Interacting with Practice Fusion:
“We use the Practice Fusion scheduler as it is convenient for both our office and our patients to have the system generate the email reminders for appointments. We have received a lot of positive feedback on that feature.”
“I have a laptop on a small desk on rollers in each exam room. I review meds and chart on the patient as I sit in front of them. This way I can chart on my laptop and still maintain eye contact with my patient. If a referral for a consultation with a specialist is required, or a referral for an imaging study, I send a message to the MA on Practice Fusion, right in front of the patient. Often the entire note is completed before we leave the room. This minimizes my charting time at the end of the day.”
“We use the templates provided by Practice Fusion but we also have created a variety of custom templates for our practice, which really speeds up the charting, yet also ensures a complete and thorough chart note.”
Benefits of using Practice Fusion:
“Using Practice Fusion has benefited the office in so many ways! I have pulled up a patient file on Practice Fusion on the computer at the hospital to assist me in completing an H&P for an admission, and since Practice Fusion is web based, I can access it anywhere! I have used Practice Fusion from home when I get an after hours patient call and I can instantly access their med list and their visit history etc to help me help them. I also chart that note right at the time they are on the phone with me; no more sticky notes and random pieces of paper that get lost!”
“I love that the pediatric growth charts are automatically graphed when you input the vitals. I love that the Past Medical/Surgical history is completed once, then just added on to as time goes on, rather than the redundant way we had been charting in the past. We also have a current medication list that we can print for the patients if needed and can easily review for completeness. I could go on…”
Practice Fusion’s support team:
“One of the best features of Practice Fusion has to be their technical support. They have been extremely responsive to technical issues and very helpful as we got started. I get a useful answer to submitted problems the same day or next day in most cases. Over the past several months I have been privileged to witness and be involved with the evolution of this EHR, as it continues to improve and implement new features.”
Challenges faced by family practice physicians:
“One of the unique challenges facing family practitioners in implementing technology such as EHR has been the high start up and maintenance costs of the “traditional” EHR. Practice Fusion solves that issue for me as we already have a wireless internet in place in the office, and we just access Practice Fusion from our computers as we would any other web site. I am gradually adding laptop computers to each exam room.”
“Another challenge is the wide variety of patient encounters we have. Practice Fusion comes preloaded with a large number of templates, and we have the ability to customize those templates as we like and add templates of our own.”
“As a small family practice office, we don’t have an “IT department”– I am the IT department! So it was very important that the EHR we chose was user friendly and did not require extensive computer hardware changes or computer software knowledge to run. Again, Practice Fusion fit that requirement perfectly.”
Technology recommendations for other physicians:
“I used Dragon Naturally Speaking to dictate all my charts directly onto my computer from 1997 to 2007, when I switched to an Apple platform and MacSpeech Dictate. Dictating directly to a speech-to-text program saves a lot of money over transcription costs. However, now that I use a template based EHR, I have very little in the way of dictation or typing.”
“I use an iPhone as both my cell phone and my pager, getting text messages from my answering service. It is very nice not to have to carry two devices to go for my bike rides. I also have a variety of medical apps on my iPhone such as Epocrates Essentials, ICDMeister, PediDoser and Medscape among others.”
“I use Epocrates Online and ICDMeister online on my computers for further assistance in prescription info and coding questions if necessary. I also recently subscribed to Up To Date and it is an excellent investment as I refer to it frequently.”
Additional Practice Fusion Case Studies
Psychiatrist
Dr. Giurgius was hesitant to go digital with his Los Angeles psychiatry practice, until Practice Fusion and his son Shadee helped him make the switch.
Orthopedic Surgeon
After trying out another EMR, Dr. Andrew Bronstein turned to Practice Fusion for his Las Vegas surgical practice and quickly discovered more than he had expected.
Family Medicine Specialist
A Practice Fusion user since 2009, Dr. Lynn McCallum manages her family practice completely paperless in Redding, California.
Nurse Practitioner
After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Scharmaine Lawson-Baker built a house call practice from the ground up using Practice Fusion’s EHR.