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S O F T W A R E
S O L U T I O N
Exceptional support
Back in 2007, the hospital-based EMR company made Memorial a
beta test site for the new surgery center platform they were developing. It was the blind leading the blind, with Ms. Bloode unaware of
how bad they had it. "We did what we could. We made a lot of system
workarounds, which became a dirty word around here," she says.
The facility's experience with the current ASC-centric vendor has
been like night and day. "We signed a contact in May 2012 and immediately began communicating through weekly conference calls about
the details of our billing and charting needs," says Ms. Bloode.
She points to impeccable customer support as an essential aspect of
any relationship you forge with an EMR vendor, especially if your
facility is like hers: small, without extra staff available to help implement a new system.
"Let's face it, anyone could have walked in here and we would have
loved their system," says Ms. Bloode, referencing the mental scars
from their initial attempt at adding EMRs. But she still appreciates
that the company they currently work with has always been available
anytime they have questions, from hectic start-up to routine use. "We
can make a phone call and get help immediately."
Stacey Sult, Memorial's information technology manager, hesitates
before politely classifying her time in EMR hell as "interesting." What
most concerned her with jumping from the cloud-based servers of the
old system to the in-house servers of the new one was being able to
access information from off site. It turns out her fears were unfounded. "It feels like my hands have been untied," she says. "I'm able to
jump into the system whenever and wherever I want, to help anyone
who needs it."
She wasn't completely sure what additional hardware the center
would need to meet the demands of the new EMR system, but a com5 4
O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | N O V E M B E R 2013
