Great medical charting software

Medical charting

Pros

Lots of templates and easy to click through to get notes done, with the items you need to bill insurance.

Cons

It took a lot clicking to complete a note and it takes time to learn where things are. The learning curve was too steep for me.

Using ICANotes for clinical practivce

Pros

ICANotes offers all the necessary features to document clinical notes and asessments and at the same time to be in compliance with regulatory mandates by insurance companies and the government.

Cons

A dasboard to track documented and unducumented sessions that would allow to track any undocumented session. Also,

Very Basic Program , could be great but needs to be updated

It is easy to use and easy to train new employees to use it.

Pros

Overall it is simple to train new Mental health techs for our Mental health rehab ( community based services) It is easy to access from the field, but clicking is difficult because of the way you must click when using it on a tablet or smart phone. The system is relatively easy to use for those new to the industry. It is less expensive than many of the other integrated programs, BUT once you realize you now pay for the ehr/billing program and now you are gettiing a seperate bill for the clearing house and you are having to pay a monthly fee for each mental health tech and each licensed person both to icn and to a clearinghouse, it is suddenly much more expensive than using a high end integrated service.

Cons

The billing software is a horrible, with repeated problems and errors, very limited audit trail, very limited ability to speak with the best clearing houses, relegated to smaller, less advanced clearing houses, lots of lag, slow at times, notes that are saved disappear, lots of weird glitches that tech support has no clue on how to resolve the issues. It is too busy to look at, if you are dealing with it all day long, it is fussy and cluttered. The report system both on the ehr side and the billing side are weak at best. There are many reports that we used in our previous software that are not available, There is no end of day processing and end of day report available. It is built on an old coding platform and needs to be modernized, it could be the best in the industry, it does a lot of basic things right.. Uploading files and downloading files or reports is not easy, you have to log into a different website, which is again time consuming if you are attempting to run reports, export them into excel etc, it cant be done on the main website, you run the report, then rather than just export it, you have to click export then go log on to a different website to retrieve it. It needs more integration. Everything feels like it was added on and just hanging on in piecemeal fashion to the original ehr.. the ehr is solid, good and great to use. I wish it was abit more flexible where you could add fields or have a form uploaded and then be usable in the system

Finally, an EMR worth discovering!

I have been working within ICANotes for approximately 2 years, having transitioned from two different EMR systems. Overall, I have found ICANotes to afford a much broader spectrum of clinical flexibility for progress notes and new assessments. Care procedures, symptoms, medications, and historical data are all-inclusive and well organized for ease of use, which is vital for a fast-paced environment such as the one I work in. My particular job involves scribing for psychiatrists during back to back assessments for an acute psychiatric care hospital. This involves obtaining important historical data, current client concerns, daily medication changes, progress, and treatment plan options, all which have to be captured as quickly as possible as client is seated in assessment room. Having such an organized system helps me maintain an accurate and quick speed, which is crucial to my work. This is the first program I have used that caters to this need.

Pros

I appreciate the ability to build algorithms, to quicken my pace, and ICANotes affords me this ability. The various chart screens are easy to maneuver and contain clear and thorough guideline categories that require just a click of a button to incorporate into the notes. The medication areas are user-friendly and contain a broad selection of medications to choose from. At each chart front page, it is easy to see allergies and medical concerns in one glance, which promotes safety and easy recall to providers, when necessary.

Cons

A primary concern has been connectivity continuity. Our office has had to switch to a web based launch, as opposed to remote log-in, due to considerable interruptions and stalls, which were were very time consuming and frustrating, given the pace that my work requires to be maintained. However, the connection options we have now are much improved, overall. For the purpose of creating a tidy note, I also would prefer that categories to be left-align in each section so that the headers would not appear to be floating in the middle of the page. This may seem like a small thing, but, when creating over 30 notes a day and spending time left-aligning each category of use, this can be a time hindrance.

ICANOTES REVIEW

Overall I would give ICANOTES high marks for ease of use and customizability .ICANOTES operates much faster than I expected even though the computing is done in the cloud. I had feared it would be like Allscripts prescribing system which is quirky and slow. I anticipate that using ICANOTES will allow me to go fully paperless within a year.

Pros

I have found it very easy to use and learn very quickly. I was able to complete almost all my notes during visits with patients by the second day of use. I also found that typing personalized information was actually easier than handwriting notes .As I see a fair number of Workmans Comp patients it insures legibility and makes for a more refined note which has to be submitted with claims. I have not yet used the customizable buttons yet (I've only been at this one week) but expect that using them will make my notes seem more like what I naturally write. I also like the ability to upload documents into patient charts. I had been exploring the possibility of moving to electronic records a number of years ago and kept coming back to ICANOTES. I had not pursued till now because I expected the learning curve to be steep and long. That has not been the case and I wish I had done this years go. Using DrFirst prescribing system with ICANOTES is a plus as it is integrated and quick.

Cons

It was a little difficult to be able to upload patient data - not because of ICANOTES but because other systems do not setup data to enable conversion to excel or csv files (Therapist Helper, for example). I also found that prescribing systems do not share information either (Allscripts). I fortunately did have enough data from my scheduling program(Scheduleview) to get the baics put in. I was getting a little panicked at the thought of having 700 patients entered manually. The scheduling program in ICANOTES is a little underpowered as I would like to see it have the capacity to send out reminders which I understand is being investigated.