Requirement
To develop a custom Electronic Health Records (EHR) system that concurrently addressed the report-writing, data storage, and billing needs of Executive Mental Health Inc., a specialized mental health practice in Los Angeles, CA.
Challenges
Over the last five years, EMH expanded from a group of two clinicians to a group of 23 clinicians and seven support staff. While the expansion led to increased revenue, it required EMH’s CEO to consider a series of issues that were more easily managed in a smaller group. Specifically, the CEO wanted to standardize the report-writing process to maintain quality control over the report-writing process. Moreover, it became important to create an EHR system to enable the CEO to track clinician efficiencies. For example, he wanted to track the amount of time that transpired from the point at which a patient was examined to the point at which evaluation reports and/or progress notes were completed, placed in charts, and uploaded into the EHR system in preparation for billing. Additionally, the solution had to comply with stringent HIPAA regulations.
Approach
The client came to us with a high-level idea for optimizing the process by which clinicians write, file, and report client information. Our team methodically approached the project, beginning with a discovery period in which we interviewed clinicians and conducted a granular analysis of their report-writing approach. Working inductively, we implemented a web application and scalable data-storage model that created a more efficient report writing process, enabled supervisory staff to maintain better quality control, and allowed EMH to track clinician efficiency.
The new program was engineered to synchronize with and exchange HR and EHR data back and forth between internal and external billing systems via HL7, SFTP transport, and proprietary JSON-based API architected by Intercarve.
Results
The application established the foundation of a lucrative business model that dramatically increased productivity and revenue and enabled EMH to maintain the quality of the reports that served as the foundation of the expansion over the last five years.