Praxis EMR Software

Praxis EMR has made my office more efficient, allowed me to document better and faster than my peers

It has made my office extremily efficient. It allowed me to document better, faster and provide better care for my patients. It has allowed my office to keep up with the regulations and the documentations necessary with the changes in the medicare payment model. It allowed my billing company to efficiently receive billing information electronically and start the billing process the same day the patient seen. It allowed me to be almost paperless by interfacing with imaging centers and laboratotries. I cannot say enought about this EMR, I dont know how we did without it in the past.

Pros

The use of Praxis is limited by your imagination. There is nothing that this EMR cannot do to make my practice easier. It has allowed me to provide better care to my patients, document better and keep up with the difficult regulations that are imposed on us. Support and training has been wonderfull and the team that administers this Praxis EMR company is caring and provide personal assitance.
With every upgrade, the system gets better, faster and it is truely better than all the EMRs that my colleagues have. I always finish the notes when I am done seeing the patients and I have access to my notes anywhere as long as I have internet access. Many of my peers who do not have Praxis EMR are not able to finish their charting due to the inefficiency of their EMR system. With Praxis EMR, the more I use it, the faster and more efficient it becomes for me to see patients.
With its setup, it has allowed me to keep up with all the regulations and documentation necessary for all the insurance companies. Even my billing is faster and more efficient. I can go on and on about how wondefull this EMR is......

I initially purchased Praxis as a DOS user in the 1990s and have seen it from the beginning.

I believe I am much better able to do a good job caring for my patients and keeping complex histories and conditions better organized. I am better able to meet the increasing government requirements of reporting and tracking without that interfering as much with the doctor patient relationship. Praxis allows me see what I want to see each time I see a patient for a given condition. Because of the use of discreet data, and the freedom for me to easily select what I want to see without having to hire a programmer to do it for me. Example: for my patients with hypertension, I have trained praxis to print the last 3 Blood pressures recorded on the note. For the diabetics, I list their last several A1c results, their urine for microalbumen and EGFR For patients on meds for hyperlipidemia, I have it extract the last 3 lipid profiles, For thyroid patients, I pull the last several TSH values, and for Obese patients, I can show the last weights. If I want to see what medications I have tried for treating their depression, everything is listed since I started using the program, and a quick click on a box takes me to the encounter for that date. Each physician or provider has their own unique way of doing things, so instead of having to agree on the templates that we want to use or have written for us, each of has our own and yet we can share what we have done with others, and if they want to use what we saved, they can easily import it, or just look and decide to do it their way. The program has recently complied with new regulations so we have just received our own secure email so we can receive or send information to other providers with other platforms once those programs catch up to Praxis. The assessments are so easy to create, that when I have a patient with unique needs, that I know I will need to create the same unusual lab order in the future, I can easily create a lab order that will be saved as "KNOWLEDGE" that could be specific for that patient to recall it in the future. I can name these assessments whatever I want to since the assessment names are for my eyes only. I do vasectomies, and the initial consultation complete with handouts is all part of one assessment, and the assessment for the actual procedure, creates the note, which is there for me to change anything but can also include any post op medications and instructions all as part of that assessment. It would be painful for me to go to a template EMR

Pros

Unlike other EMR programs that require you to create templates and spend a lot of time clicking, praxis works on a unit of though concept. Anything you want to do repetitively you can easily "save with knowledge" while working with a live patient and that information will be there for you to use in the future. This can be as simple as saving an order for compression hose for a patient to use the next time I need to use it, or as complex as having the program query my lab database to present the last several labs that apply to each of their chronic conditions .
Praxis also sorts your "units of though" you have saved by frequency of use, and it can help you find what you are looking for quickly in an unusual way for an EMR. If you start with a prescription, it will show you all of the "assessments (units of thought) that you have every used that prescription for.
It also helps you remember the things that you might otherwise forget in an incidental visit. Any items such as have they had their flu shot? Did they get their pneumonia vaccine? Did you do the things you decided are best for the patient?
Also when you combine several assessments on the same visit for the patient, they all appear in the same note and are not hidden on some other page or drop down menu, or in a sub note like many EMRs.
Their support is quite remarkable. Anyone in the office can open a chat, and praxis is there within seconds to address the issue and record it to send to t

Cons

Since praxis has been developed over decades with input from the physician users, rather than a team of programmers from a venture capital firm, it doesn't plug you into someone else's thought process. I could use the analogy of a word processing program. Anyone can open up "Word" and just type, but it can do so much more, that actually requires you to put a little effort into it. That can be annoying in word, but when you learn it, your horizons open up and you can do so much more.

As I mentioned above, I purchased the program decades ago which included the upgrades over time. I had partners who didn't want to put the effort into using an EMR, so our office purchase another EMR. After just a short time the severe limitations of that program became apparent so they decided to subscribe to the EMR that our billing software company promoted and has bundled with an excellent accounts receivable program. That program also had severe limitations on what one could do. The training was very limited and I soon learned about template medicine. My partners finally realized that what they had in the Praxis program that they had not tried was far superior to these two programs. They discovered with a few hours of one on one training they already had a far superior program with Praxis. Praxis allows you to do your own queries if you are interested, or you can use the many already supplied, including those that are needed for reporting.

Best of all the EMRs we have looked at

Any EMR, and we looked at many of them, will take a few months to adapt to. That will be the same with Praxis. As much as that was a stress and slowed us down for a few weeks, we would never go back to paper nor have we ever seen a system that would be better for us than Praxis. One thing that impressed us was that Dr. Low, founder of the company, got involved personally when we were trying to make some adaptations to make Praxis better fit our practice. He is very much hands on and will do whatever is necessary to be sure you have a positive experience and a system that will work for you and your patients. Look at as many EMRs as you can and carefully chose the one that best fits you and your practice style. Don't make that choice lightly.

Pros

The system produces a document that reads very much like one you would dictate. It is very easy to customize and alter the "template" as often as necessary. Each clinician can have their own "template". The sentences show up grayed out and you simply click on the ones you want to include in the note. No drop down boxes to navigate. Chart review is easy, although it will be nice when you can open multiple windows at once side by side to compare visits or labs. The system has not slowed us down significantly compared to dictating. You can set up different physical exam templates so that follow up visits have a different set of choices than new patient visits. Our specialty is sleep medicine so we have not used the system to pull in labs, send out prescriptions or order tests, make follow up appointments, etc. One very nice feature is that you can set up the "templates" so that you can have an MA go in and basically read through the history "template" and click on the relevant bits. The clinician can come in, review it with the patient, and the history is complete and documented. All the clinician needs to do is click through the exam, click on an assessment and the plan and you are done. This allows you to complete the chart while you are there with the patient and go on to the next one. Praxis also makes it easy to review the charts of the mid-level providers (NPs and PAs) and sign off on them as their supervisor.

Cons

Not much in the way of Cons, just things to consider in looking at Praxis. A great deal of time will be necessary to put the "templates" together and modify them to your liking. It is time well spent to get it set up as close to perfect as possible. The process is simple. We just dictated our normal history and assessments into a Word doc, cut and pasted into the Praxis "template" and modified them a bit as time went along. It is time consuming but simple. The trainers are very good and can walk you through that. If you have a practice where the history and PE are fairly different and nuanced from one patient to another, neurology would be an example, this process will be somewhat more complex. You can dictate into the history section if you prefer to do that. The downside of doing that is that you cannot complete the chart in the room.

Fantastic EMR

I couldn't even think of using an EMR that is a template based system. I've heard from doctors that use them, "then you can type in your own words on top of the templated documentation", and I say, "exactly, but why would I want to have to do that each and every time", with Praxis, you teach it once then it remembers it for ever, for example how I document a left medial knee steroid injection is learned by Praxis and I never have to enter the exam followed by the consent documentation followed by the procedure documentation followed by the followup instruction, again with Praxis "you teach it once and it remembers it forever". But beyond this (and this by it's self makes Praxis by far better than most EMR's, ) you can teach Praxis to remember specifics about the individual patient..."the cholecystectomy scar in Jim's right upper abdominal quadrant is well approximated and healed well"... and "Jim's left mid forearm shows a red and black sailors tattoo faded but still visible" ect ect. But to go even further, and this is where Praxis is far and above any other EMR out there is Praxis's "concept processor" ability to shine with the new Pay for Performance requirements. With Praxis, you teach it once and it remembers for ever in this case with "Datum +". With Medicare now requiring us to provide patient data for the Pay for Performance, it becomes easy to mine for any and all requirments. For example, Praxis can easily provide "all the Diabetics with A1c's 7.0 or less who are also on an ACE Inhibitor and have a LDL of 75 or less" and include the patients names, dob and any other data. This is all done automatically, without any extra work (or buttons to push).

Pros

It's not template, it learns from me and from my documentation (can you imagine what the Lawyers could say if my notes were simply a template and that everyone's progress note says the same, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on)

Cons

It takes some time to build up your progress notes, after that, documentation becomes a breeze and easy.

Thanks PRAXIS for an excellent product

The most important step with starting out with PRAXIS is to realize that you will come with baggage, bad habits and workarounds from using your prior EMR and it is best to spend some time in identifying them and do not carry them into your implementation of PRAXIS.

Pros

A clean interface that allows me to do what I want without having to look thru multiple panels of non relevant information, poke thru menu lists or buttons. This really reduces operator fatigue , frustration leaving me fresh for the rest of the day.
All list boxes have a superb and fast search input line at the top a couple of keystrokes and I have what I want, no need to scroll thru endless lists.
I had been using another EMR and had developed habits that were causing me to duplicate work while writing a note. On starting with PRAXIS I had to look at what I was doing and ask myself " What is the essence of this encounter, what defines it" This was the hardest step because it involved changes in my behavior, and once this was done, and it did not take long to get up and running. I had been using templates before and they were huge structures that fit no encounter, they had to be modified, whittled into shape on the fly. PRAXIS solves the problem by having smaller elements of a note which are rapidly assembled into the structure without any editing because each element is the essence. I can get a note for a diabetic exam including a foot exam before seeing the next patient.
PRAXIS has a tremendous amount of automation, that diabetic patient will get an automatic recall for labs in x months.
Support is excellent, there is an online portal where questions are answered. I have used this on many occasions and response is quick and interactive. Someone , is replying to your questions within a minute and since it is a two way conversation you do not get a "canned" answer.
I have PRAXIS on my in house server, apparently 80% of users prefer the on line hosted version. I have used both and can find no difference in speed or utility. I will eventually migrate to hosted online version. This involves overnighting the drive to PRAXIS and you are up and running.

Cons

Nothing, it has been a great improvement over my last EMR. I can get notes completed within a few minutes of seeing a patient with diagnoses that carry appropriate RAF scores for the patients problems.

I don't have to do any progress notes when I go home after work

I finish my work quickly and I don't to work at home any more with this system. I don't ever want to give up using Praxis. I had to change from a pure template system where I could never finish my notes until I got home. Soapware was my old system.

Pros

This is an assessment-based EMR that works for the physician who needs to document the encounter. I built up my assessments and at this point, I finish my notes very rapidly and the notes are of very high quality. The system is easy to add orders and can be customized easily. I use the "agent" function to send orders and messages throughout our work flow. This system interfaces with my local lab so my office staff are never manually scanning in paper copies of lab work. I was thrilled to note how fast my remote connection functions with Praxis, even though I don't have the fastest internet. This is not a template system, which is great. Prescribing drugs through the e-prescribe function works well and is easy to use.

Cons

I don't have a lot to say from a negative perspective.

My server is housed off-site, for cyper-security reasons. We did have irregular internet problem for a period of time, which meant that we did not have access to our records. I simply had my IT team get a firewall that could handle two internet sources. I have two internet suppliers and I always have access to my remote server and Praxis. Easy solution.

Awesomely pro-physician in meeting ever increasingly complex bureaucratic hoops.

As a solo primary care office and hospital Family Practice physician I work hard to make use of all the exceptional features available in both setting with this amazing software. That is why I rely so heavily on InforMeds exceptional training staff. I can manage my patients from the mountains, beach and even when a locum tenems is covering my practice in an emergency as long as I have internet access to connect to Praxis.

Pros

I have got to put in kudos to InfoMed for my Praxis EMR. I have no complaints about the support I have received as I completed my meaningful use Years 1-5 2010-2014 to earn my CMS incentive for early adoption. I have been waiting for approval for MIPS participation through the new 7th version for the new v 7 Praxis which was release and certified by for meaningful use a few weeks ago. 2018 will be our year to institute surface pro tablets for each provider and nurse to make us mobile in the hospital as well as in the office. Again I compliment Praxis for allowing me to capture all my charges at point of service, keeping my documentation bulletproof from retrospective level of service audits, streamline and update my maintenance of quality indicators and permitting to hyperlink my reference sites with my patients. I will now begin using the multiple diagnosis global assessments to streamline my documentation even further. Onward and upward. Thank you, InfoMed!

Praxis is the by far the best, most intuitive EMR I've ever used.

Pros

We transitioned to Praxis one year ago and the implementation was surprisingly smooth. Once Praxis begins to learn you and you continue to save more notes, charting begins to simply take care of itself. Where I used to be in the office until 7:00 or later charting, I now often leave the office at 5:30 with all my charts, phone calls, refills, etc... done.

Since Praxis doesn't require you to click through templates, I get to spend the visit with the patient making eye contact not stuck behind a computer.

Reimbursements continue to become more and more value based. Praxis easily helps you make sure you are hitting your benchmarks with the documentation to back it up.

By utilizing a practice management solution that typically partners with Praxis, we are working on essentially automating the billing process.

The ultimate EMR would be one that, when it is working at it's best, you would barely know that it was there. Instead you simply find yourself practicing medicine with a tool helping you do so efficiently and with excellence. In my experience Praxis is the only EMR that begins to fill that goal.

Cons

No EMR is perfect. Praxis has been beyond responsive to our requests for improvements. They are driven by the users and creating the best experience possible. It has been refreshing to have a software company listen to our concerns as opposed to telling what we want.

Praxis is an Excellent EMR

I am SO happy that I chose Praxis for my EMR. It is one of the best decisions that I made for my practice. I HIGHLY recommend it!!!!!

Pros

As a clinician, what I really, really like about Praxis is the way I can chart in my own style and words, without a rigid template being forced upon me. It allows me to document various types of clinic visits exactly the way that I would like to, and its concept processor allows me to build a library of knowledge as I chart patients which I can pull from for future applicable cases. It helps me be more thorough, careful and accurate in my documentation, and helps me chart faster, too! Praxis helps me be a better doctor. Another fabulous aspect of Praxis is their EXCELLENT customer service, by far the BEST that I had experienced when I was looking around for an EMR for my practice and has remained great since I've gone ahead and signed on with Praxis. Everyone that I have encountered on their team - my sales representative, the administrative staff, the implementation managers, my trainer, and Dr.Low himself, are all so professional, nice, helpful and knowledgeable. They are consistently prompt in getting back to me whenever I have any questions. They have consistently made me feel valued and supported as a client, and I appreciate that very much. Having Praxis makes transitioning to and having an EMR, which I thought would be a stressful and problematic experience, actually very enjoyable.

Excellent System. We would never go back to paper.

It allowed us to have notes that "sounded like us", not like some robot. It is easy to change the "templates" as we go along. It gives us more complete notes.

Pros

We looked at most every large vendor system and all had the same limitation, you had to use templates so the notes sounded stilted or were simply unreadable. With Praxis our notes read as though we dictated them. They flow well and convey information in the way we think. Creating your own templates will take some time but you can modify them as you work. No need to call IT or tech support. You can dictate into the system as well, I think, but we never have done that. The trainers learned our practice style, a bit about our specialty (Sleep Medicine) and we decided to set the system up differently than is normally done. It worked great and Praxis software is flexible enough that we could do that. Most importantly, once we were up and running it didn't really slow us down. It also made for more complete notes. The query bit makes it easy to search your patient base when you are doing the Performance Improvement projects that the ACOs require.

My Ten Years With Praxis

Great affordable and functional software and it has worked rather well with Total MD which happens to be my practice management software. The bridge has worked out fine.

Pros

I have been using Praxis ever since I left a hospital practice to start one on my own! The time consuming part is to make the templates personally for the common conditions I see on a regular basis. But once that is done in the future we use those templates or notes and exam notes as well as usual prescriptions for the condition, etc. over and over and it is my own work and not where I have to use someone else's format of notes! I have remained older fashioned and kept the software on servers in house. I see most people these days use it in the cloud. It has evolved over the years and has been an integral part of keeping my practice profitable and successful! I do recommend it for physicians in multiple specialties!!

Cons

I always wish for more speed but that is a function of the computers and the servers and I do need to upgrade the server I have it running on but otherwise it has been a great asset!!!

I've been extremely please with this producet

ease of use, flexibility, great support

Pros

I have found this to be a true thinking person's software. Rather than being fed a template created by someone else, the user actually creates his/her own template for differenet assessments and modifies it continually over time. In only a few months, and with excellent training support, I've found the software to already have become not just easy to use but remarkably, sometimes amazingly, predictive. I often find myself shocked at the completeness of an assessment for a new patient, and all in my own words. The support has been amazing, from the initial interaction with the Sales Force, to the Training Sessions, to the Interface Team. I don't remember ever meeting a team, in any field, that was as available, as knowledgeable, or as supportive as this one. Everyone with whom I've had contact seems to have a genuine interest in the product, and in helping me to be successful in its use.
In a world where physicians are increasingly inconvenienced, it's a breath of fresh air to interact with a well-thought-out product and with a group of people who are so kind, so well-informed, and so diligent.
I have no reservation in recommending this product

Cons

Nothing .

Great EHR that I am able to customize to fit to my practice.

Pros

Praxis has a Concept Processor model that allows you to make your own template for problems thereby reminding me to order the appropriate tests for a specific problem. I am able to change this as time goes by. This is what attracted me to this EHR. I researched several EHR companies finally deciding on Praxis. I wanted a company that was stable and was going to be around for the future . I also wanted a program that would have the ability to change to meet the requirements of the government or physicians. Because of the government, new burdens are placed on us every year and I feel that Praxis rises up to the challenge. I started off with my own server in my office and now I am using the cloud server. Customer service is very fast and prompt. The price I feel is reasonable. No EHR is perfect but I feel that Praxis fits almost of all of my EHR needs.

Cons

EHR's are never fast enough, but Praxis does a good job in keeping up with me. I am sure every EHR user feels the same way.

I had Praxis since I opened my practice. It allows me to use EMR the way I wanted.

Made it easier to chart.

Pros

I am able to use it the way I want. I don't have to rely on templates. If I want to change the prepopulated information I need not to ask any tech support and can do it myself. My partners don't have to use my settings and template and can do their own changes. I am able to chart a level 4 follow up in less then 3-4 minutes while talking to patient. New patient may be 15 minutes while with patient and 7-8 minutes if I do it afterwards. Even if I don't have a medical assistant and I have to take patient back myself doing all the vital signs, I can still do a follow up in 5 -6 minutes. New patient information will take longer.

Cons

When praxis first comes it is completely blank, it will take you 18 -20 hours to create all templates. If you want you may import any other Physician's templates and thst will make it easier. However this is the way you get to create it the way you like. This also allows you to know how Praxis works so I recommend that you do take this time.

I have been a long term user and have enjoyed using it over the past 15 years

Pros

Praxis uses concept processor in place of templates which makes my notes unique and my own. I do things the way I like to do rather than following someone else templates. Once you grasp the basics the whole process becomes intuitive and very easy to follow. Praxis has kept up with changing CMS regulations and for end users that makes it very easy to meet the quality measures required by insurance companies. I have been very satisfied with Praxis over the years and find it to be a great EMR

Cons

I am a very satisfied user of Praxis and really can't think of any downside to this software. I use other EMRs in the hospitals and find them to be rather limited in view of their template format which forces you to comply with someone else thought process in filling out the template format. You end up spending a lot of time typing free text every time you want to record your own unique thought process - not so wit Praxis!

Praxis gives me the tools to practice more efficiently, and record my notes more easily.

Pros

Praxis keeps getting better the more I use it. It is amazing how it adjusts to my practice. Instead of being stuck with somebody else's EMR templates, Praxis learns from how I use it. With each patient encounter, Praxis learns how I approach each diagnosis and uses this with future encounters on other patients. Documenting visits, ordering tests, generating letters and handouts, prescribing meds, complying with Medicare requirements all done easily with Praxis.

Cons

There is some time needed at the beginning to set up this EMR so it works optimally for each provider, but this investment in time is worth every minute, because forever after the program works just the way you want it to. After the initial start up, Praxis keeps learning from each encounter, so using it gets easier and the tools more powerful the more you use it.

Praxis Review

I've been using Praxis for a year. It's a pretty awesome program. The design allows docs to build templates on the fly and reuse the same templates and modify them for each patient. The templates and modifications can be saved as new templates and pulled up based on assessments. If you've got a patient with multiple assessments, then pull up one or more of the completed templates and build a report as a collection of templates. For instance if someone has elevated homocysteine, then once you've built a template for this assessment, each time another case has this imbalance, the full template can be pulled in containing diagnosis codes, patient educational info, recommended diet and lifestyle changes, meds or supplements and description of the condition. Write it once and it's there whenever you need it again.

Pros

Easy template use, smart software, great customer support.

Cons

I'm waiting for patient portal for patients to fill out history online, to be incorporated directly into chart so that no manual entries will be required for this step. It's a feature that is in the pipeline and should speed up the patient management and reporting considerably.

Finally, a software that helps my clinic productivity

This is my third software in four years. The first one (HF) was alright but technical support was horrible and took us months to get acquainted with the software. The next one (CM) had good technical support but was so slow. We changed our internet connection to fiberoptic and added a SAT drive to all our computers but to no avail. I was spending at least 30 minutes to complete a progress notes and I found every minute of my working hours hurrying to complete clinic notes which I always fail to complete on time. Currently on our fourth week with Praxis, things are looking good. Charts are being completed on time and I found free time to attend to other clinic duties. I have not read the operational manual yet which I am planning to do but I think at this point, I finally found a great software for my Urgent care/Primary care practice.

Pros

After the first week of use, I can complete my clinic notes within 5 minutes with a document that fully satisfy coding criteria and confident that what is documented truly reflects the events and findings of the visit. There are clinic progress notes that I can complete in less than one minute. Truly amazing.

Cons

Creating a knowledge base or series of modifiable templates is simple and easy but is not something that doctors do everyday. There is a learning curve that could get challenging. However, Praxis has plenty of training sessions online and real time support persons that guided me and my staff in every questions that we have. An actual training with the software in person by a trainor was also a big help. During the second week of use, the clinic is going good.

The more you use PRAXIS the speed of the program accelerates as it learns your thought patterns.

Pros

The program has a Conceptual processor (not templates) which is extremely flexible, quick and this makes PRAXIS unique when compared to all other EMR's. Having used templates before it is an easy start but as the data is placed in the template EMR it becomes cumbersome, slower and more difficult to use. PRAXIS self learns your practice patterns and improves with time. After 16 years of using PRAXIS I still make daily micro improvements to my knowledge base as medicine changes. I go to an OB/GYN conference and learn a new treatment and at home I create a new virtual patient for my data base and throw away my notes.

PRAXIS IS EXCELLENT!

Pros

The evolution of PRAXIS is physician directed and this is the key point. This is why PRAXIS “Kicks Ass” (please excuse the vulgarity) on all physician EMR surveys. The program has a Conceptual processor (not templates) which is extremely flexible, quick and this makes PRAXIS unique when compared to all other EMR’s. Having used templates before, templates are an easy start but as the data is placed in the template EMR it becomes cumbersome, slower and more difficult to use. PRAXIS self learns your practice patterns and improves with time. After 15 years of using PRAXIS I still make daily micro improvements to my knowledge base as medicine changes.

Cons

To find the ideal EMR is like looking for the Holy Grail you will never find it! There is no perfect EMR and they all have some problems and I have looked at many.