<img class="" style="float: right;" src="https://opedge.com/Content/OldArticles/images/2008-06_14/Paul_P.jpg" width="220" height="283" hspace="4" vspace="4" /> Accreditation deadlines are coming up, and it's time to get our policies and procedures tidied up and ready to be placed under the microscope of one of the accreditation agencies that have been approved to evaluate our acceptability to provide O&P services. This year I am going to focus on how my Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) standards will assist in my accreditation, starting with how workflow automation through my clinical management software can be used to document consistent and measurable standards of practice in my office, and then using the data that I have been collecting automatically while managing my patients to evaluate trends and produce reports that will help me see how well my practice is doing compared to previous time periods. One of the benefits of EMRs is that I can easily evaluate compliance in both clinical documentation and administrative procedures in my office on 100 percent of the patients that I have seen in any given time period. Various checks and balances in the practice management software allow me to know if notes have been taken on every patient who was seen and if all the necessary documents are in place to be compliant with CMS standards. I can also check to make sure that each electronic chart contains the appropriate information necessary to document fabrication procedures as well as all components that were included in the development of a patients device. If something is missing, it is easy to spot, and I can have staff members focus their attention quickly. I could never do that in the world of paper charts without having a full-blown chart audit. The consistency and ease of monitoring makes me much less worried about the accreditation process. Another thing that I am counting on for facility accreditation is the strong link between how my office operates from a human resources perspective and the processes in my clinical management software. Since the software covers all areas of my practice, each staff members roles and responsibilities are tied directly to the workflow processes in the software. This makes it easy to define who is responsible for specific aspects of patient management and monitor how each person has been performing his or her roles and responsibilities. The software fits directly into the organizational structure, with everyone having a unique part in a tightly integrated process. I can also measure trends in time, referrals, workflow issues, problematic processes, and overall effectiveness of scheduling, fabrication, and billing using the data-mining tools that are built into the software. For quality assurance programs, the availability of this data is going to be a goldmine of information to help my practice measure successes or challenges at levels of detail never before available. The accreditation process is definitely not my idea of fun, but having the software tools in place to document a high level of compliance, provide the technological infrastructure for a strong organizational system, and create consistent workflow definitely puts me in a stronger position than I recall being in the days of paper charts and utter chaos.
<img class="" style="float: right;" src="https://opedge.com/Content/OldArticles/images/2008-06_14/Paul_P.jpg" width="220" height="283" hspace="4" vspace="4" /> Accreditation deadlines are coming up, and it's time to get our policies and procedures tidied up and ready to be placed under the microscope of one of the accreditation agencies that have been approved to evaluate our acceptability to provide O&P services. This year I am going to focus on how my Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) standards will assist in my accreditation, starting with how workflow automation through my clinical management software can be used to document consistent and measurable standards of practice in my office, and then using the data that I have been collecting automatically while managing my patients to evaluate trends and produce reports that will help me see how well my practice is doing compared to previous time periods. One of the benefits of EMRs is that I can easily evaluate compliance in both clinical documentation and administrative procedures in my office on 100 percent of the patients that I have seen in any given time period. Various checks and balances in the practice management software allow me to know if notes have been taken on every patient who was seen and if all the necessary documents are in place to be compliant with CMS standards. I can also check to make sure that each electronic chart contains the appropriate information necessary to document fabrication procedures as well as all components that were included in the development of a patients device. If something is missing, it is easy to spot, and I can have staff members focus their attention quickly. I could never do that in the world of paper charts without having a full-blown chart audit. The consistency and ease of monitoring makes me much less worried about the accreditation process. Another thing that I am counting on for facility accreditation is the strong link between how my office operates from a human resources perspective and the processes in my clinical management software. Since the software covers all areas of my practice, each staff members roles and responsibilities are tied directly to the workflow processes in the software. This makes it easy to define who is responsible for specific aspects of patient management and monitor how each person has been performing his or her roles and responsibilities. The software fits directly into the organizational structure, with everyone having a unique part in a tightly integrated process. I can also measure trends in time, referrals, workflow issues, problematic processes, and overall effectiveness of scheduling, fabrication, and billing using the data-mining tools that are built into the software. For quality assurance programs, the availability of this data is going to be a goldmine of information to help my practice measure successes or challenges at levels of detail never before available. The accreditation process is definitely not my idea of fun, but having the software tools in place to document a high level of compliance, provide the technological infrastructure for a strong organizational system, and create consistent workflow definitely puts me in a stronger position than I recall being in the days of paper charts and utter chaos.