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By Sheryl Lentfer, OD
Nov. 7, 2018
In Alaska, due to scarcity, you need to be more resourceful and adaptable than you would in the lower 48s. This is also true when it comes to practicing optometry in Alaska.
When I decided to start a new practice after spending 18 years in a family-owned eyecare practice, where I was seeing 20 patients a day, I knew that a critical component to my practice success was implementing a cloud-based EHR and practice management solution that would adapt to my practice and the changing optometry landscape.
After careful consideration, even after investigating a solution that wasn’t designed for the eyecare industry, my business partner, Laura Kompkoff, OD, and I selected Uprise by VisionWeb. When I first learned of Uprise at a Vision Expo event, the team assured me that their solution could accommodate the practice and withstand the advancements in the eyecare community. After using Uprise for years, I’ve seen how the team has offered me the most intuitive and complete solution that adapts to my practice.
BILLING
Since opening in 2015, our practice, Katmai Eye and Vision Center, has provided Anchorageites with primary eyecare exams, vision therapy, neurorehabilitation, sports-related vision training and therapy, and more. Due to the nature of the practice, we don’t bill insurance directly. Rather, we collect
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cash upfront, which means that the information that an optometric practice would normally put on a CMS form is now needed on the patient’s invoice.
Because we bill differently, the EHR and practice management tool I selected needed to allow us to include the NPI number and other information, typically found on a CMS form, directly in the patient’s chart. The team at VisionWeb not only understands vision and medical billing complexities, but they were also willing to work with me and my practice to bring new features to their cloud-based EHR and practice management solution so I could practice in a way that provides the best value to my practice and our patients.
Throughout the years, Uprise has added numerous feature enhancements to simplify the way optometrists do business. One of the most important features for my practice is the line-item editing capability on invoicing. Now, if we need to add or remove a charge from an invoice, I can make the change quickly, so our invoicing and AR reports are accurate.
Practitioner-Focused Customization
With the breadth of services provided at Katmai Eye and Vision Center, there is never a typical day. To reduce scheduling clutter, my EHR is accessible and customizable for the practitioner. So, in the morning, when I log in, I see the list of patients who are scheduled for me that day, along with tags which indicate the appointment type. And, since it’s built in the cloud, I can log into the EHR on any device, whether at home, in the office, or even out of the country.
Having a full schedule can make it difficult to prepare prior to each exam. With Uprise, I can move from exam room to exam room and access a patient’s chart from either a tablet or a laptop for mobility. If I’m not sure what a patient’s refractive history is, I can pull up the appointment and see a side-by-side comparison. The visibility, mobility and ability to analyze a patient’s past appointment results help me make my practice more efficient and improves patient satisfaction by reducing their time in the exam chair without decreasing the quality of care.
While in the exam room, I can customize my most common diagnoses, so they show up earlier during the exam. And when a diagnosis is selected, Uprise automatically populates the treatment, orders, special testing and patient education all from the single entry. Having this level of customization and automation in the exam lane helps me move patients along in the workflow so they can get on with their day, and optimize our schedule.
Most importantly, the responsiveness of the Uprise customer support team provides my staff and me with the peace of mind that if an issue with the EHR arises, they will be quick to respond to us and resolve the problem so we can get back to our patients.
Request a demo of the cloud-based EHR and practice management solution that I use in my practice.
Sheryl Lentfer, OD, is a partner with Katmai Eye and Vision Center in Anchorage, Alaska.
