An EMR that puts the physician and patient first

Pros

Specialty-specific EMR built that is easy to use and intuitive. Assists with proper ICD-10 coding and use of modifiers. Additional modules for Pathology, Practice Management/Billing, Telemedicine, and MIPS reporting are available as integrated features. A proactive and responsive company that takes provider issues and input seriously.

Cons

The system is designed around an optimal workflow. As with any EMR, office workflows will need to be updated in order to align with the system's capabilities.

EMA is the best ophthalmology EHR available.

Our experience has been so excellent with both the EHR product itself as well as the Modernizing Medicine team that we have since adapted their practice management software as well. While using another practice management company we were able to directly contrast the customer support between the two companies...and there was no comparison. From implementation to troubleshooting, the support from Modernizing Medicine is far superior to anyone we have come across. The support team is reason enough to choose EMA over its competitors. Fortunately they also have a superior product to go with a great support team. If you are considering an ophth EHR do not hesitate to go with Modernizing Medicine. You will not be disappointed. I have no financial incentive or other alternative motivation to promote this product. They have exceeded my expectations from the very beginning and I just really love this EHR!

Pros

The intuitive interface makes documentation far easier than any of the other systems we tested before choosing EMA. Even our more senior partners were able to adapt to this system coming from decades of paper charting only and without having to employ scribes.

Cons

We are dead in the water on the very rare occasion that we loose internet connectivity. Currently there is no way to access prior patient records or testing since it is all stored on a cloud server. In 4 years of using this system we have only had this happen 2 or 3 times for a period of 1 hour to half a day. This has never been a problem with the EHR system itself but was either our internet service provider or once when there was an attack on the amazon server system. Reverting back to paper at those times was a great way for us to realize how much we preferred documenting in EMA rather than paper!

I am in a 2 person general dermatology and Mohs surgery practice. I was using a paper chart system prior to switching to EMA in 2011, and now have almost 12000 visits documented in EMA. I always thought that when I left the military and entered private practice 16 years ago, I would adopt an EHR system very soon. I quickly realized that it was not easy to find a system out there that could match the efficiency of the single page progress note with anatomical figures that my practice like many others had been using for years. I set a goal to find an EHR system that would make me more efficient, but still allow the convenience of documenting the visit on an anatomical figure like most dermatologists have done for years. I also wanted to be more accurate and complete with my documentation, and preferably be more productive. Finally, I wanted a system that would allow me to maximize face time with the patient and minimize the drudgery of all the paper work associated with patient care. When I started evaluating EHR systems at different dermatology meetings in 2010 and 2011, I did not see a single system that met any of those goals. Then I stumbled upon the Modernizing Medicine booth at the AAD meeting In New Orleans. There was definitely a lot of interest in the product and I was immediately impressed. Finally, a system that appeared to be designed by a dermatologist with all my goals in mind. I have to admit the implementation was not as easy as I expected. The product was relatively new at the time we began and far from perfect, but it has improved by leaps and bounds - and Modernizing Medicine continues to find ways to improve it regularly. Most of my staff has learned to use EMA very quickly, and brand new employees seem to adapt to EMA faster than they do to a paper chart. I estimate it took 6 months to be reasonably comfortable with the system, but with the improvements made in the program now, I suspect that time could be even less for a new user. The coding feature of the program is I think one of its greatest strengths. I learned more about accurate coding in the first 6 months of using EMA than I had in 15 years of manual coding. The coding feature has not only shown me many areas where I was previously under coding, but has also highlighted visits where I previously may have lacked documentation to justify a code. I always take clinical photos of biopsy sites to help me prepare for future surgery. This program does an excellent job of assigning the photo to the patient's visit with a label almost effortlessly. Filling out a pathology request and all the specimen jar labels use to be a pain in the neck with a paper chart. Now, all the pertinent information is collected from the note and in a few clicks the request and labels are done. Not a single call back from the path lab because they cannot read the path request form since we started EMA. The ultimate goal of an excellent EHR system should be to make us a better doctor by allowing us to spend more time thinking about what is actually wrong with the patient, and to provide us tools to arrive at a diagnosis and treatment more accurately. With the ease of documentation and addition of some of the new features such as VisualDx, EMA is very close to achieving that ultimate goal for me.

Newer Modernizing Medicine Users

Pros

The EMA system is intuitive, the analytics are pretty robust and the PM system is easy to learn.

Cons

The PM process for registering a new patient is choppy and I wish more fields were mandatory such as email address, referral source and referring provider

The schedule is development's redheaded stepchild

EMA is robust, and the PM system has come a long way in the past few years. Medical documentation is vital (EMA), and the billing portion of the PM has understandably received more attention and more advancement than the scheduling portion. Hence my title.

Pros

Integration with Relatient for appointment confirmations

Cons

The list is long, but here are a few highlights: -Desperately need permissions granularity by user and by appt category (preference group). -When an account is inactivated users are still able to set appts. Not ok. Inactivating an account should disable it from a scheduling perspective. -As an administrator I'm spending way too much time changing the templating daily. The templating is simplistic and clunky as far as edits to existing template. Needs a delete option of "from today's date forward" and not just "delete all" or "delete this single one". -The schedule block feature should be granular; not all users should have that permission. I also need to be able to make recurring blocks, to be able to choose the date in the block window and not have to go to that date in order to block (which if you're in a week view is a PIA), and need to be able to choose a date range. -The schedule grid was not optimally designed for a multi-provider practice that wants to "view all providers here today". Each time I go to the schedule I have to reload every doc. Would like to be able to choose a default schedule that could be user preset that would load with some sort of default button, or at the very least have the system keep the memory sticky of the way I had it loaded when I left that screen. Way too many clicks right now. -Canceling appointments requires too many clicks. -Need a drag and drop feature from one provider's schedule to another.