practice goes from painful ehr to painless system with ims · printing, the ability to easily...

Case Study: Navajo Road Pain Management Center

The Situation

Navajo Road Pain Management Center, a practice specializing in pain management, is located in El Cajon, California. Established in 1997, the center has about 2,000 patients and is dedicated to providing the best possible treatment to each of them. The practice has two offices, with one physician surgeon and one physician’s assistant.

When the Managing Director, Mr. Krish joined the team at Navajo Road Pain Management Center, the practice was already running on an EHR system that had been in place for about three years. As soon as Mr. Krish settled in, he realized that the practice was struggling with the system and it was not providing any of the benefits they had initially hoped for. As a specialty practice with authorization required for every patient, procedure and new office visits, the staff still had to spend time every day filling out each patient’s information, a process that could be sped up significantly with the right software. According to Mr. Krish, the system was “catastrophic, unstable, not user-friendly, and [provided] scanty support.” As a previous owner of a software development company in India, Mr. Krish was familiar with healthcare information technology and the needs of a typical doctor’s office, and recognized that it was time for the center to implement a more effective system that would actually improve productivity, efficiency, and patients’ overall experience.

The Solution

When Mr. Krish began his search for a new system, he knew exactly what components to look for. For each department, including staff, administration, providers and the biller, he created a list of particular criteria that the software needed to meet in order to be a good fit for the way they ran the practice.

Mr. Krish knew, for example, that the staff needed a system with a paperless fax server, eligibility checks, instant chart views and the ability to set up and automate authorizations. It was important that providers had encounter and procedure notes, a lab report review function, prescription verification and printing, the ability to easily create letters to referral doctors,

Practice Goes from Painful EHR to Painless System with IMS

Challenge: With an unstable and unreliable EHR system in place, this specialist practice needed a change in order to work more efficiently.

Solution: The robust functionality and customization of IMS, paired with the high quality of customer support and online resources, made Meditab the right partner for Navajo Road Pain Management Center.

Results: Increased patient encounters with existing staff deployment for the same providers with reduced patient wait times and improved practice bottom line. In addition to receiving incentive payments from the Meaningful Use program, the center is running more efficiently and the happier employees are able to provide an even higher quality health care delivery.

Practice Name: Navajo Road Pain Management CenterUsers: 15Specialty: Pain Management Time in practice: Established in 1997Location: El Cajon, CA

Snap Shot: This pain management practice was using an inefficient and unstable EHR system. They searched for an user friendly EHR that would provide them with enhanced functionality faster automated reminders for authorizations and superior product support all of which they found in IMS from Meditab.

Practice profile


Benefits experienced:

Qualified for and received $18,000+ in Meaningful Use incentivesReduced patient wait times and increased patient encounters by more than 5% Improved volume and speed of authorizationsPrompt responses to pharmacies’ request for medication refillsStreamlined flow of informationMore productive employeesImproved insurance eligibility checksIncreased revenue by 13% with more efficient billing

and instant views of any forwarded communications. The administrator needed convenient inter-office communication, the ability to track reminders and a variety of reports and audit logs. The criteria for the biller included having user-friendly and efficient claims reporting, the ability to easily track submitted claims, as well as unbilled encounters, simple creation of billing reports, auto posting of electronic claims and easy viewing of all scans including the actual EOB scans.

While researching and testing six systems, Mr. Krish was very impressed by Meditab’s initial presentation of IMS. Seeing the customized demo gave him the confidence that this system would be more successful for the practice than the center’s previous EMR. In addition to participating in a detailed presentation from Meditab, Mr. Krish was able to visit a nearby practice that had recently implemented IMS to get a feel for how it positively affected their workflow.

“It really made a difference to see the whole system in action,” he explains. “I was able to watch staff members go through various steps and also talk to them about the ins-and-outs.” He also learned that Meditab was able to make a smooth data migration from the practice’s previous system, which was a great benefit to them.

Taking into account all of the information Mr. Krish had gathered through his extensive research, paired with his existing knowledge of the software industry, he decided that IMS was the right fit for the Navajo Road Pain Management Center and the practice went live with the new system in February 2010.

The Outcome: Clinical and Financial Gains

During the transition to IMS, Mr. Krish was reassured of his decision because Meditab provided “excellent online training sessions” and truly held the practice’s hand each step of the way through the implementation process. “We found the online resources incredibly helpful” says Mr. Krish. “During the training sessions, we were really able to get everyone in the office involved, as we connected our PC to a widescreen TV for the trainings and all learned together.”

Mr. Krish found that Meditab’s customer support team was knowledgeable and prompt and very patient and he also appreciated their level of competence and commitment. It was this level of support that made his staff feel comfortable that they had made the right software selection and that IMS would be more dependable, usable and effective than the previous system they had been using.


After IMS was implemented, the practice finally experienced the true benefits of what it is like to run on an effective EHR system and they’ve increased overall revenue by 13%. The employees are more productive because IMS makes their workflow more streamlined and the patients are happy because of an improved flow of information and reduced wait times. The center has been able to increase their patient encounters by more than 5%.

“IMS has improved the information exchange between primary care physicians and testing and diagnostic labs, which makes patients happy, as they know that everyone responsible for their care has access to all the right information,” said Mr. Krish. “Our patients also really appreciate the faster response times from the pharmacy, as we use the auto reminders for medication authorizations and that speeds up the process significantly.”

Comprehensive e-prescribing tools make managing and tracking medication refills easy.

“IMS has improved the information exchange between primary care physicians and testing and diagnostic labs, which makes patients happy.”

Mr. KrishManaging DirectorNavajo Road Pain Management


Customizable authorization tracking tools let each practice track the information they need according to their preferred workflows.

As a pain management specialty practice, Navajo Road Pain Management Center has to get authorizations for every visit. They find the authorization module in IMS very useful as once a provider says that a patient needs a procedure, the system sends a reminder automatically, it populates all the information and the staff don’t have to enter anything - it’s all right there as part of the patient record. This has allowed them to increase the number of procedures they carry out by more than 19%, a huge benefit as that is their largest revenue source. Additionally, thanks to the extensive customization options available through IMS, Mr. Krish has been able to completely tailor the way that they create authorizations, making the process more efficient for their specialized workflow.


One unexpected benefit is that Mr. Krish has been able to identify patterns within the system, providing valuable information. For example, when analyzing the patient encounters, he noticed there were some patients who had been coming in once a month over the past three years solely for medication and not for any procedures, so he notified the relevant physicians that there could be a potential misuse of prescribed medications. Sure enough, a short while later, the relevant department requested some information on individuals who had been on Mr. Krish’s initial list, as they were being monitored for diversion of medications. “If you really understand how to use the system, IMS can provide such wonderful, meaningful reports,” Mr. Krish said.

Built-in Meaningful Use dashboards make it easy to see how your practice is tracking according to MU measures.

Additionally, Navajo Road Pain Management Center has used the tools within IMS to assist them in participating in the Meaningful Use program. Integrated reporting within the system makes it easy to assemble the required reports, and thanks to the Meaningful Use dashboards, the staff can easily see where they haven’t satisfied a specific criteria and make sure to go back and attend to the areas where they need to focus. The center has already received $18,000+ in Meaningful Use incentives this year and reports that IMS has been very helpful in keeping them on track for Stage 2 attestation.

IMS dashboards can help practices identify patterns to prevent medication misuse.

About MeditabEstablished in 1998, Meditab Software Inc., developers of IMS (Intelligent Medical Software), o ers clinical automation systems that maximize productivity, advance patient care, manage utilization, and reduce costs. Meditab develops and supports a multi-award-winning, multicer ctronic Health Records (EHR) system that combines clinical charting, e-prescribing, population management, decision support, practice analytics, document imaging and much more, on a single database platform. The company takes tremendous pride in providing comprehensive, user-friendly, and a ordable solutions for each practice’s unique needs.Time tested and proven, IMS generates tangible returns for medical practices of all sizes. Headquartered in Oakland, Califor ross the globe, Meditab supports hundreds-of-thousands of users nationwide.

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your practice wants to analyze the data, IMS can provide the reporting.

processes thanks to IMS, but one of the aspects that Mr. Krish most appreciates is the high level of customer support he’s received from Meditab. He says, “The best part of IMS is the online support

is able to take control of the computer, show them the problem and more importantly, the solution. Their communication

encounter.”

practice goes from painful ehr to painless system with ims · printing, the ability to easily...

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