Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc., provider of the integrated, single-database electronic health record (EHR), practice management and interoperability solution PrimeSuite®, has been awarded a patent for its innovative template builder module used to create custom clinical templates that can be integrated with financial and administrative workflows.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office recognized the unique template creation features that primary care and specialty practices can build upon and streamline to meet specific provider and practice needs.
"The template branching patent reveals an innovative process of using web browser, HTML and XML functionality to allow clinicians to develop clinical templates in a quick, logical format to fit their clinical environment," said Greenway Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jim Ingram. "The ease of modification, as well as to build from scratch, can be done by the clinician, eliminating the dependence or cost of relying on third-party developers."
The functionality utilizes existing patient history and demographics data to merge with diagnosis and examination checklist templates to standardize point-of-care patient encounters and coordinate care plans as well as preventive medicine, all of which is retained in the patient's electronic chart and can be accessed for quality reporting analysis. Complaint and diagnosis data is merged with E&M, ICD and CPT codes to streamline billing functions.
Greenway's PrimeSuite EHR is embedded with thousands of available templates, including those for referrals, orders tracking, consultations and correspondence aligned with primary care or specialty clinical templates, enhanced by the ability for practices to expand and tailor their capabilities as well as workflow.
Pediatric Associates, a seven-location, 80-provider practice based in Bellevue, Wash., for example, created 20 physical examination templates to match patient age and demographic ranges.
"We recognized the need for digital templates stored in a central location," said Dr. Steve Schiebel, medical director of Pediatric Associates' Totem Lake practice, "so we took the available content library templates and analyzed our patient encounters to create a series of custom templates. We found this was the best way to match our workflows and offered an ease of use. That this templating was available was an attractive element of Greenway's solutions."
As chief template architect for Pediatric Associates, Schiebel also directed the branching of sick visit, well visit and patient history templates, for example, as well as such specifics as separate upper respiratory and lower respiratory templates.
"Greenway is gratified that the processes and dedication we devoted to improved practice workflows has been patented," said Greenway President and CEO Tee Green. "As much we are very pleased that our custom templating ability is providing the means for improved healthcare outcomes through enhanced diagnosis and care plan development, which in turn leads to enhanced quality reporting that is increasingly needed for emerging reimbursement models."
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