Insights & Advice

What You Need to Know About the Certified EHR Incentives

Posted on 18. Jan, 2012 by Brad Rourke.

Learn about the beginning of the incentive program, i.e. – the Recovery Act, and discover details about qualification requirements, how incentive payments are calculated, and the timing for these payments. We discuss 15 core requirements and 5 menu items you must fulfill in order to qualify. During this informative webinar, we will toggle from these abstract requirements to providing a visual of a few of the requirements with Practice Director. In addition, you will learn what you need to file to receive your incentive payments and hear about some things you should consider doing to prepare.

Click the link below to view the recording of the January 18, 2012 webinar:
“What you need to Know about the Certified EHR Incentives”
Additional Resources

Here are also a number of links to sources of information that I discussed in the webinar:

1. CMS Official web site for the incentive program: http://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/

2. HIT Policy Meeting Schedule: http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=1269&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=5&mode=2

3. Registration information for the program along with PECOS and NPPES information: http://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/50_Registration.asp#TopOfPage

If you have any questions, contact us.

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Practice Director set to Release first update to Certified Version 4.0 & Utilizing Amazon Web Services

Posted on 07. Dec, 2011 by Brad Rourke.

December 7, 2011, Lincoln, NE – Practice Director Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of Williams Group, announced that they will be releasing enhancements to their ONC-ATCB certified EHR software. In addition to numerous clinical data efficiency enhancements, the EHR and Practice Management software vendor will now be utilizing Amazon Web Services.

When releasing Version 4.0, Practice Director’s ONC-ATCB complete certified health record, the Company had incorporated Google Health to provide patients with timely access to their eye care health information. Shortly thereafter, in June of 2011 Google quietly announced they would be discontinuing Google Health Services. Practice Director has moved their service of providing timely access to patient eye care health information to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, more popularly known as Amazon EC2. Practice Director will provide a patient portal through Amazon Web Services, which will allow patients to securely access their eye health information on demand. Optometric Physicians will now have the capability to provide their patients with secure electronic access on demand to their eye health information. The Practice Director portal through Amazon EC2 increases the control the software vendor has over providing this service and improves the efficiency and accessibility patients have to their eye health information.

Practice Director is also utilizing Amazon Simple Storage Service, more popularly known as Amazon S3, for its software updates. Amazon S3 is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers, the service aims to maximize benefits of scale, which will allow Practice Director to pass these benefits on to its clients. Practice Director is now utilizing Amazon S3 to deploy software updates to clients by allowing Practice Director users to pull software updates down over the web at their convenience versus scheduling and pushing software updates to clients.

“The addition of Amazon Web Services technology provides scalable efficiencies that will be passed on to our valued optometric physician client base, their staff and their patients” said Brad Rourke, CPA & Vice President of Practice Director. “In utilizing Amazon Web Services we are leveraging state of the art technologies for the benefit of our clients”

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Define your Exam Workflow with Our Customizable EHR

Posted on 01. Dec, 2011 by Tammi.

Practice Director continues to provide one of the most easily customizable EHR and practice management software solutions available for eyecare professionals, and our clients are amazed at the difference. With a few clicks, the EHR can be customized to follow the order of your evaluation, including testing, patient history and workup, refraction and examination.

“The customizable EMR layout is great, allowing us to personalize it as much as we want. Un-like other software programs, where there is only one way to record an exam, Practice Director lets us record our exams according to our business flow. Looking back, we are confident we made the right choice, and we whole-heartedly agree that Practice Director is the best value in optometry software.”
- Derek Swader, OD

For more information about exam work flow with a customizable EHR, contact us here.

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Visit us at KOA’s 2011 Fall Eyecare Conference

Posted on 11. Nov, 2011 by Tammi.

Kansas Optometric Association’s 2011 Fall Eyecare Conference is being held at the Wichita Airport Hilton in Wichita, Kansas on November 19th, 2011. Be sure to visit with a representative from Practice Director Software at Booth No. 13. For more information about the Kansas Optometric Association’s 2011 Fall Eyecare Conference, visit their website.

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Visit us at 2011 Wisconsin Optometric Association Convention & Annual Meeting

Posted on 21. Sep, 2011 by Brad Rourke.

Wisconsin Optometric Association Convention & Annual Meeting is being held at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in Appleton, Wisconsin on September 22nd through the 25th, 2011. Be sure to visit with a representative from Practice Director Software. For more information about the Wisconsin Optometric Association Convention & Annual Meeting, visit their website.

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Visit us at Vision Expo West 2011

Posted on 24. Aug, 2011 by Tammi.

Vision Expo West 2011 is being held at the Sands Expo & Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 21st through the 25th, 2011. Be sure to visit with a representative from Practice Director software at Booth #12037. For more information about the Vision Expo West 2011, visit their website.

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What You Need to Know About the Certified EHR Incentives – September 20, 2011 Webinar

Posted on 29. Jul, 2011 by Brad Rourke.

Learn about the beginning of the incentive program, i.e. – the Recovery Act, and discover details about qualification requirements, how incentive payments are calculated, and the timing for these payments. We discuss 15 core requirements and 5 menu items you must fulfill in order to qualify. During this informative webinar, we will toggle from these abstract requirements to providing a visual of a few of the requirements with Practice Director. In addition, you will learn what you need to file to receive your incentive payments and hear about some things you should consider doing to prepare.

Click the link below to view the recording of the September 20, 2011 webinar:
“What you need to Know about the Certified EHR Incentives”
Additional Resources

Here are also a number of links to sources of information that I discussed in the webinar:

1. CMS Official web site for the incentive program: http://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/

2. HIT Policy Meeting Schedule: http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=1269&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=5&mode=2

3. Registration information for the program along with PECOS and NPPES information: http://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/50_Registration.asp#TopOfPage

If you have any questions, contact us.

Continue Reading