No matter what modality or setting you practice optometry in, it is important to have an electronic health record (EHR) that can serve your needs.
There are many modes of practice, and at different stages in your career, you might at some point find yourself working in a single or multi-location private practice, group practice setting, or in corporate optometry as an associate or sublease owner.
All of these environments share some similarities but also have some key differences. Regardless of what setting you are in, one thing that each of these settings share is the need to have an EHR that adequately manages your patients, exams, communication, and practice management needs.
In this article, we interviewed three ODs, working in three different modalities, who all chose RevolutionEHR to meet the needs of their unique practice environments.
Modality: Cold Start Single Location Practice
Courtney Dryer, O.D.
Dr. Courtney Dryer is a 2011 graduate of SCO. She opened AUTARCHIC SPEC SHOP in her hometown of Charlotte, NC in February of 2013. In addition to consulting with new graduate optometrists on start-up practices, she contributes regularly to NewGradOptometry and has guest blogged for Invision Magazine. The unique design of her boutique practice was featured in Women in Optometry. In 2015, Vision Monday named her a Rising Star, and one of the most influential women in optical.
Describe your experience with RevolutionEHR.
As a cold start up almost 6 years ago, choosing RevolutionEHR was one of the best decisions I made. I was confident that a system created by an OD would be the most efficient for an optometry practice. When I looked at the eyecare software market, I knew I needed a system that would grow with my practice, change with the healthcare environment, and I would be confident with going into the future. Updates and improvements to the system are the norm with RevolutionEHR. In addition to the user interface and design of their system, they offer three additional critical elements that can benefit any practice including: commitment to technology, customer support, and a focus on eyecare. There are also many marketplace additions, integrations, and tools and resources built into RevolutionEHR which can really streamline your office’s administrative process and enhance the patient experience.
Who would you recommend RevolutionEHR to?
First, RevolutionEHR is focused only on eyecare and every member of the customer support team has experience working in eyecare. I think this is extremely important. Having someone who is familiar with office flow, efficiency, and the things that are beneficial to an optometrist daily, is key to improving and advancing an EHR. I really like that they take ideas and suggestions from their customers and address problem areas. It has been 6 years since I’ve used other systems, and I have found that RevolutionEHR is more comprehensive and integrative than anything I’ve used previously. I operate and manage almost every element of my practice including billing and coding. RevolutionEHR makes it easy to track this ensuring you are getting paid for your work!
Another great offering of RevolutionEHR, is their desire to keep their customers and users informed. I attend RevolutionEHR webinars on updates on government regulations and new releases regularly. It is great having access to those resources.
How does Revolution EHR differ from other software programs out there?
First, it's led by an optometrist. I think this is extremely important. Having someone who is familiar with office flow, efficiency, and the things that are beneficial to an optometrist daily, is key to improving and advancing an EHR. I really like that they take ideas and suggestions from their customers and address problem areas. It has been 5 years since I've used other systems, and I have found that RevolutionEHR is more comprehensive and integrative. For example, with Exam Writer and Office Mate, your exam recommendations for patients did not transfer to the optical. This was a major problem if you implement doctor driven dispensing. As I do much of my billing myself, I find it easy to track the billed vs. the outstanding. I found MaximEyes to be difficult in this area. This is vital to timely billing and collections.
Also, the desire to keep customers informed was a huge benefit for me. I attend RevolutionEHR webinars on updates in government regulations and new releases. I like having access to those resources.
Modality: 2 Location Target Sublease Holder
Chun AuYeung, O.D.
Dr. AuYeung graduated from Nova Southeastern University College of Optometry in 2012 and held two subleases with Luxottica’s Target Optical in Wheaton, MD.
Having been a sublease doctor was wonderful. Not only has it showed me a glimpse of what private practice ownership is like, it has also allowed me to take control of my career by practicing optometry the way I want to practice. I’ve benefited from but also have faced many challenges by being a business owner. Though being a small business owner can be stressful at times, the rewards and benefits definitely outweigh the negatives and the little risks of being a subleasing doctor.
Describe your experience with RevolutionEHR.
My experience with RevolutionEHR as a corporate sublease holder has been extremely positive. I was very pleased with how thorough and prompt customer support was, and getting everything set up for my practice was easy and very user friendly. The Onboarding Team guided me through every facet of the initial set up, including customizing exam templates to suit my specific exam flow, and showing me how to create accounting reports specific to my needs as a corporate sublease holder.
The entire process typically takes around 4 weeks for a sublease holder, however for me it was much quicker. This time frame can definitely vary based on your comfort level, but I found that after I established the main building blocks, I was able to learn the system fast enough to be confident. When I was getting started, I was paired with a specific support representative who spent ample time with me via screen share and was also able to use the Help Line which is very informative and quick to respond.
Would you recommend RevolutionEHR to other corporate offices and why?
I have no reservations in recommending RevolutionEHR to all sublease holders. RevolutionEHR is extremely user-friendly and integrates seamlessly with Luxottica brand entities (LensCrafters, Target, Sears). RevolutionEHR’s integration with pre-testing equipment and our appointment scheduler has really saved my staff and myself a lot of time. If a patient schedules an appointment online, their information is automatically recorded in our appointment book and updates in real-time on our scheduler.
I have an autorefractor and autokeratometer that seamlessly integrates with our exam template and auto-populates into our autophoropter, which then populates automatically as a “Final Rx” after I’ve completed my refraction. Talk about efficiency in workflow!
How does RevolutionEHR differ from other eyecare software programs out there?
RevolutionEHR is a very modern, user-friendly system. The user interface is very simple to learn, and the ability to run customized and detailed reports that suit my specific needs as a corporate leaseholder have helped me manage certain aspects of my practice more effectively. For example, I utilize custom accounting reports to better understand how many patients I am seeing on a monthly or weekly basis, and what demographic a bulk of my revenue is coming from. This helps guide my marketing efforts. I also love that this system alerts me if I haven’t completed required fields or entry reviews, which ensures that I am always charting appropriately to avoid any audits or headaches down the road.
What are some top features of RevolutionEHR that you find most beneficial?
The fact that RevolutionEHR is cloud-based has been incredibly beneficial for me. I frequently access the system from home to finish charts, or communicate with patients, finalize prescriptions, or handle emergencies. Report customization allows me to keep an eye on every facet of my business.
As mentioned before, I find my patients and my staff have really benefited from the ease and capability of integration with Luxottica’s appointment system (TAB-The Appointment Book) as well as integration with my equipment.
Reporting allows you to see the quantity and source of credit cards sales (VISA vs Mastercard vs AMEX etc) so you then have a strategy when shopping for better rates in the future in regards to Merchant services.
Modality: 3 Multi-Location Group Practice
Jesse Kahnk, O.D.
Dr. Jesse Kahnk graduated from The Ohio State College of Optometry in 2013. He lives in Ankeny, Iowa with his wife Megan and 2-year old daughter Quinn. He is part of an ownership team that owns and operates three independent optometry practices in the Des Moines, Iowa metro area: Eyecare Associates of Ankeny, Johnston EyeCare, and Altoona Eyecare.
Describe your experience with RevolutionEHR in a multiple location setting? Was the process seamless and easy? Did each location require a separate setup?
When we were looking to expand our practice from one location to three, we knew that we would need to look beyond an on-location server based system. The reality of needing information to be seamlessly accessed and edited in many locations was going to be vital to our new business model. In my mind, cloud-based health records are nearly a mandatory requirement for multiple-location practices.
The process of getting everything set-up for the new locations was pretty easy. For the new start-up location, it wasn’t much more than flipping the switch and moving over our defaults, care plans, exam templates, etc. from the existing location. For the existing location, you always hope more patient information flows over from the old EHR system to the new one than what typically happens. Once you institute a workflow to account for entering or reviewing this information, everything is a lot more manageable. All of the work you have done on RevolutionEHR for your existing location transfers over to the new location automatically, so you don’t need to start over from scratch. Plus, you can still customize charts for each location differently if you want.
The day to day operation of RevolutionEHR in multiple locations requires separate patient environments. For instance, if I’m in Location 1 and want to see the patients and schedule for Location 1, I need to make sure I’ve selected Location 1 in the dropdown. A nice feature is that RevolutionEHR knows my schedule. So, if in the morning I’m seeing patients in Location 1, RevolutionEHR will automatically default my schedule to that particular practice. If in the afternoon, I’ll be in Location 2, when I login, my schedule will automatically display that practice’s schedule. It’s pretty slick and gives you one less thing you need to manage.
What are some of the major challenges of running multiple practices and how does RevolutionEHR make this process easier?
One of the challenges of multiple practices is that any change in one practice needs to be implemented to the other offices. Where RevolutionEHR helps is that we can edit multiple items and share those updates across locations seamlessly. For instance, if we want to update new pricing for a certain contact lens, we can adjust the price for one location and copy that change to the new location instead of making multiple edits.
Another challenge of running multiple practices is time. When you travel from one location to the next, your mindset also moves away from the practice you were just at. That’s where you need help to continue to fill in those gaps. Certainly, having great staff, great managers, and even business consultation makes a big difference, howeverRevolutionEHR also assists with this. RevolutionEHR offers a suite of additional business solutions that can really make a difference for multiple location practices that need to off-load some duties like reporting, billing, ordering, or managing your optical.
How have you used RevolutionEHR to help you with practice management decisions?
RevolutionEHR has been instrumental in our practice management decisions and even aided in a change of our company culture. Reports inside RevolutionEHR unlock troves of data for your practice. One of the biggest challenges is then taking all of that data and organizing it into a mode that can be used for analysis and interpretation. That’s where you can utilize services like Glimpse, RevolutionEHR’s own Pulse, or just your own excel documents to track, graph, and visualize trends across your multiple practices.
Now that we have all of this data that we can quickly extract and organize, we can create unique and specific goals for our entire practice and to specific job tasks. Doing so, we have shifted our company culture to one that’s more goal-oriented. Now we spend time during our monthly meetings reviewing our quarterly goals and focusing and addressing ways we can meet each goal.
Would you recommend RevolutionEHR to other multiple-practice offices?
Yes, definitely. Like I mentioned previously, I really think that if you have multiple locations, then a cloud-based EHR is a must. There’s so much to keep track of and you just can’t be everywhere at once. You have to be efficient and organized to stay on top of things. For our office, RevolutionEHR has been instrumental in that because it provides an all-in-one solution. It is not just an EHR, but an optical management and practice management tool as well.
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