Nimbus Health Blog
About Team Nimbus Health:
Justin and Terry hail from team Nimbus Health. Nimbus Health is a company devoted to the cause of making EMR’s as available as possible to patients and doctors. Nimbus Health provides a secure, simple and streamlined EMR service.
Location: Seattle, WA
Team Leader: Justin Wilcox
Looking for additional team members: No.
Our Outline for a Solution:
Depending on the capabilities of the API, there are two potential projects we could pursue:
1) EHR Integration
We’d love to see if we could build plug-and-play integration between Practice Fusion and “any other EHR or HIM system.” We have some technology that enables us to produce both structured data, and human-readable documents, from virtual any EHR within minutes – no custom code required.
It would be interesting to explore if we could take data & documents produced from one EHR/HIM system and plug them directly into Practice Fusion.
Possible use cases for this functionality:
1. The provider has multiple EHR, HIM, or Practice Management systems (who doesn’t?) and wants to use Practice Fusion as an aggregated repository for all their information. That’s far better than their alternative today (printing docs from all systems and putting shoving them in a folder).
2. The provider is migrating from one EHR to Practice Fusion and wants to migrate patient records on an as-needed basis, as opposed to a bulk migration which may be expensive & time consuming.
3. Help providers achieve Meaningful Use. To meet all of the MU requirements, providers must be able to do at least two things with a comprehensive set of patient data: share it electronically with patients within 48 hours of request & exchange it with other providers. Imagine a provider who has some of that information in Practice Fusion, but not all (perhaps the patient’s prescriptions are in another system). This functionality could be a way to incorporate all necessary data into Practice Fusion when it comes time to share it with patients or exchange it with other providers.
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2) Release of Information
The other project we’d like to explore is adding end-to-end Release of Information capabilities to Practice Fusion. Only 2% of requests for medical records actually come from patients; the vast majority come from other providers, attorneys and insurance companies. While virtually all of those requests for records are filled via mail or fax today, we’re building services to enable the delivery, and payment, of Release of Information requests online.
Release of Information workflows are fairly process-intensive:
1. Request for medical record is submitted
2. Request is authenticated
3. Request is logged
4. Health information is aggregated, typically from multiple systems and often from paper sources
5. Information is printed from an EHR or photocopied if already on paper.
6. Record is abstracted/redacted. HIPAA requires records be stripped of mentions of HIV, substance abuse, or mental health issues unless access to that information has been explicitly granted by patients or is required for care.
7. If applicable, an invoice is generated for the request. This applies to requests from attorneys and insurance companies (typically 45% of requests). The amount that can be charged is dictated by each state, and varies significantly. Average chart size is roughly 50 pages and can generate roughly $25 – $75 depending on the state.
8. Record is delivered to requester by mail or fax
9. Invoice is paid to provider (hopefully)
Considering this entire workflow is done via paper & mail/fax today and can easily take 60 days (30 days for record delivery & 30 days to receive payment), there are significant efficiencies we can achieve. Specifically, computer-assisted abstraction, electronic delivery of records, and online payment processing can reduce turnaround time from weeks to hours while decreasing Release of Information costs.
This functionality by the way, the ability to track, deliver, and process payments for their Release of Information requests electronically, is not available in any EHR on the market today and would be one more way for Practice Fusion to differentiate itself.
Let us know if either of these projects sound compelling; we’d be excited to explore them both.
Thanks,
The Nimbus Health Team