MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY
DOCTORSPARTNER owners Naveen Venkatachalam and Dr. Geetha Priyanka are closely watching the federal government’s efforts to encourage physicians to adopt Electronic Medical Records.
BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – A quiet office doesn’t usually signal a bustling business. But to the founders of DoctorsPartner, the absence of ringing phones at the company’s Melbourne, Florida call center means their product is successful.
DoctorsPartner provides software that helps doctors maintain electronic medical records and manage their practices. The product needs little support, boasts Naveen Venkatachalam, who created DoctorsPartner with his wife, Dr. Geetha Priyanka.
The idea for the software product was born of necessity. Priyanka, an internist, wanted to computerize medical records when she started her own practice. “The prices people wanted to charge were ridiculous,” she recalled, citing figures upwards of $120,000 for the service.
And yet, she was convinced of the need. Priyanka had worked for large groups before branching out on her own, and she’d seen the chaos that paper charts can cause. She remembers when Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering medication, was recalled. Individual paper charts had to be manually consulted so the practice could notify every affected patient of the recall. “It took hours and hours of work,” she said.
If the practice had used electronic medical records, also known as EMR, the same function could have been performed in less than a minute.
She didn’t need to look far for a computer expert to engineer a solution. A former IBM employee, Venkatachalam has a background in finance and worked in business software.
In fact, his computer expertise is somewhat responsible for bringing them together. The two were acquaintances when Priyanka was working in New Jersey and wanted to develop a web site for professional women. “I was the only computer guy she knew,” Venkatachalam said, so she contacted him about the idea. That web site didn’t end up coming to fruition, but they did create a site for pet owners based on their hobby of showing dogs. The couple married in 2002 and moved to Melbourne the following year.
Affordable and Functional
Priyanka wanted to build a top-notch product and make it available to doctors at an affordable cost. They launched the business in early 2003, offering three main product lines:
• Solo doctor and small office system. A small office can get started with the basic product, known as Daylite, which offers just the EMR feature. The company often provides the starter package at no charge, knowing that doctors will like the product, grow their business, and need a more powerful version.
• Mid-level product. The full-blown DoctorsPartner system includes the EMR function, as well as practice management features.
• Large group customization. “Some practices are so big or specialized that nothing fits them out of the box,” Venkatachalam said. They might have multiple offices that provide care for large companies and need customization for their particular business.
Versatile and Efficient
The software performs a variety of functions. In addition to managing a database of electronic medical records, DoctorsPartner can provide automated calling to patients to remind them of upcoming appointments.
It’s also a single source for a variety of hospital and other forms that can be scanned in and signed on-screen. Lab work can be integrated into the system and electronically fed into the EMR. And at the end of the workday, bills are automatically generated.
DOCTORSPARTNER’S practice management solutions – part of its integrated EMR product – ranked Best in KLAS among small doctor offices in the company’s annual ratings in 2007. The Electronic Medical Records side also fared very well, coming in second place.
As a doctor, Priyanka knows that what works for her specialty won’t apply to someone else’s. So DoctorsPartner documents can be modified easily to accommodate an ear-nose-throat specialist or a cardiologist. Different specialties working at the same practice can customize their screens based on a different login.
And patients will appreciate the convenience of being able to fill out medical forms at home and have them imported into the system, instead of the “arrive-15-minutes-early” routine. A portal feature allows a patient who has an account with a doctor to plug into the doctor’s website and fill out forms, request an appointment or ask for a prescription refill.
DoctorsPartner installs a server in the doctor’s office, so that all data is in-house and is not relying on the Internet to be operational. But the system can be accessed by the doctors via the Internet when they’re away from the office, using the same security as Internet banking transactions. Priyanka recently used the feature during a trip to India. She was able to connect with the system and work from there.
“Naveen runs a tight ship. They’re very responsive to what people are looking for,” said Mark Wagner, director of ambulatory research for KLAS. The Orem, Utah-based company monitors healthcare technology products and firms to help healthcare providers make informed technology decisions. KLAS provides annual ratings of vendor performance based on research with thousands of healthcare organizations.
DoctorsPartner’s practice management solutions – part of its integrated EMR product – ranked Best in KLAS among small doctor offices in the company’s annual ratings in 2007. The EMR side fared very well, coming in second place.
Users particularly liked the company’s training support and responsiveness to requests for new features, Wagner said.
Scores slipped in the 2008 ratings, which came out in December. Wagner suspects that users are concerned about where the company fits in the future of healthcare. Its small size makes DoctorsPartner nimble, but also might mean limited resources to address challenges, he said.
DoctorsPartner’s business model counteracts those concerns, Venkatachalam said, by using a subscription system. He explains the benefit by contrasting the company to a system like Microsoft Word. Buy the software, and you’ll incur a one-time fee and get to use the software forever. When there’s an upgrade, you’ll need to invest more – or you can put it off. Many EMR companies operate the same way, charging very high upfront fees and basing their success on continued sales.
That hasn’t worked so well in the current recession, Venkatachalam noted. But DoctorsPartner continues to thrive because of its approach. The company charges much less upfront, but then continues to receive subscription fees. Clients receive frequent upgrades without having to make another big purchase. The result is more staying power. “Our revenue stream is guaranteed,” Venkatachalam said.
Customers particularly like the fact that DoctorsPartner requires little investment after the initial purchase, Priyanka said, and doesn’t nickel-and-dime the customer.
Conform Or Be Penalized
Like all companies, DoctorsPartner is closely watching the federal government’s efforts to encourage physicians to adopt EMR.
NAVEEN VENKATACHALAM created DoctorsPartner with his wife, Dr. Geetha Priyanka.
As part of this year’s stimulus package, doctors can get federal money by meeting meaningful use standards by 2011. If a practice hasn’t met the standard by 2015, they’ll be financially penalized.
The mechanism for the carrot and stick is Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. Qualifying practices will get a higher percentage in reimbursements, and penalized practices will get a lower percentage. The goal is to improve patient care and reduce medical errors, both results that have been shown to accompany EMR utilization.
The sheer number of practices that have not yet adopted EMR – estimated at 75 percent of the half million practices nationwide – mean that vendors are likely to be overwhelmed once standards are clear and practices move to comply.
DoctorsPartner already anticipates certain requirements and is working those in now, Venkatachalam said. More details about requirements for EMR systems are expected to emerge in the fall. “There’s a mad scramble to find out what the software has to do,” Venkatachalam said.
Beyond the federal standards, his personal vision for the future includes technology that would allow patients to check in and out by a hand-scan device, introducing a new level of privacy for the patient.
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Regardless of the politics involved in President Obama’s Economic Stimulus Plan, recent legislation tied to this plan begins a long and complex expansion of foundation principles required for increased adoption and usage of electronic medical records by physicians and patients.
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