Practice Fusion: Connecting with Our Users
I am an Account Manager at Practice Fusion. It is my job to answer questions and help new users adopt the EHR. The greatest part about my job is that I am continually in touch with what Practice Fusion users need and what their concerns are. We understand their gratitude and appreciation and we experience their frustration. I hear ideas from users every day about feature requests across the spectrum of our product, from the ability to change the color of an appointment to sending referral letters directly from the EHR.
The beauty of our company is that we utilize the input from our users to create better features. We then add these new features to the EHR without users having to download and install a new version because the EHR is completely web-based EHR. It always feels great to see how appreciative a doctor is after the upgrades take place. And, a side note for anyone reading this, we want your suggestions, because if you have something on your mind it is likely that other users do as well. Our product managers see every single request that is sent in and each one is prioritized by how often that specific request is received. As I learned in Economics 101, the greater demand for an item, the more incentive there is for us to produce it. Be sure to look out – our upgrades usually take place about once every six to eight weeks. Every time something is upgraded, we will send you an email explaining exactly what has been improved.
You might be curious to know what type of questions we get asked on a daily basis. A majority of the time, doctors want to know the key features and the steps they need to take to get started. We help you chart, schedule, e-prescribe, and order labs with training and support!
One common misconception is that Practice Fusion is a biller (we are an EHR). We work with any billing company you use and help you keep track of all charges by creating superbills. I also get asked if we integrate schedulers with other applications (there is no need to!). You can still use your own scheduler and create charts with ease, but I would recommend using Practice Fusion’s scheduler for a few reasons: you can jump from the schedule straight to a patient’s chart as well as view their visits and scheduled appointments in their chart. Additionally, a front office person can set the status of the visit so that the provider can easily see if the patient has arrived or not.
Being at the forefront at the heath IT boom is definitely an exciting opportunity and helping doctors run their practices more efficiently brings many challenges with great rewards. I am looking forward to seeing the EHR expand in the future through a connected network of Health Information Exchanges (HIE s), enabling all systems to communicate easily with one another. But first, let’s get everyone using EHRs.