In the latest stride towards enhancing healthcare practice efficiency, AdvancedMD has launched over 30 updates in its Winter 2024 Release, under the guidance of Tim Costantino, VP and Head of Product. This comprehensive update addresses critical challenges like staffing shortages, physician burnout, and financial constraints through innovations in EHR, practice management, and patient engagement platforms. Highlights include a streamlined eRemittance Center, a “Mass Write-Off” feature for administrative efficiency, and significant ePrescribing updates to expedite patient care.
Tim Costantino shares his insights on these pivotal enhancements, detailing how they foster a more efficient, secure, and patient-centered healthcare experience. Join us as we delve into a conversation that sheds light on AdvancedMD’s commitment to revolutionizing healthcare practice operations, directly from the visionary behind these transformative solutions.
1. For those unfamiliar with AdvancedMD, could you provide a brief overview of what the service offers to private practices?
AdvancedMD is an all-in-one EHR, practice management, and patient engagement healthcare technology platform that drives productivity and streamlines workflow processes for private practices. The company continues to lead HealthTech innovation with a complete cloud suite of smart applications that work in unison, accelerating collaborative workflow for every role of the practice. With AdvancedMD, medical office staff are empowered to thrive in the online age of healthcare and value-based reimbursement with essential clinical, financial, patient engagement and reputation management applications that are unified and available anytime, anywhere, on any device.
2. How does AdvancedMD differentiate itself from other EHR, practice management, and patient engagement platforms available in the market?
AdvancedMD differentiates itself by providing a truly integrative platform that offers unparalleled interoperability, advanced analytics tools, and heightened security levers that ensure the safe and compliant exchange of patient data. Because AdvancedMD is an all-in-one platform, practices can connect all sides of their business with innovative and intuitive EHR, practice management, and patient engagement solutions—improving patient outcomes, minimizing administrative work, and, ultimately, driving the business forward.
3. Can you explain how the redesigned eRemittance Center in the latest AdvancedMD update improves efficiency for practices?
The redesigned eRemittance Center offers a more streamlined and efficient experience by allowing practices to search, review, and post multiple payments faster. It also enables ad hoc searches for ERA-related filters and the ability to save a search to run continuously. Ultimately, AdvancedMD customers can now navigate the eRemittance Center at an accelerated pace by drilling down to the most important details and post payments based on those results.
4. What inspired the introduction of the “Mass Write-Off” feature, and how does it benefit administrative staff in managing patient accounts?
All of our product updates are inspired by customer feedback and actions we can take to make their work life easier. The “Mass Write-Off” feature is a prime example of giving back more time to admin teams that oversee collections and billing processes by giving teams the ability to do things like write off balances under $10 or all insurance balances more than 120 days old with just a few quick clicks. This newly added feature makes it possible to write off multiple charges across multiple accounts, while also updating collections account notes simultaneously. In addition to creating a more efficient “write-off” process, customers can search for open charges assigned to patients or payors using 15 dynamic filters and add a collections action or note while doing the mass write-off.
5. The update includes eight new ePrescribing features. Could you highlight how the ePA donut and the “Last Office Visit Date” field enhance prescription management?
As part of the new ePrescribing features, the newly updated ePA donut lets customers see all prior authorization requests, shrinking the amount of time admin teams devote to ePrescription processes. The “Last Office Visit Date” field that has been added to medication forms and renewal requests helps minimize time spent on admin duties by offering up important patient data that is needed when completing ePrescriptions. Both updates are simple, but impactful, additions that add greater efficiencies to digital prescription processes.
6. How does allowing patients to upload medical documents and files directly into the EHR and patient engagement platforms improve patient-provider interactions?
Offering patients the ability to upload medical documents and files directly into the AdvancedMD EHR solution helps minimize errors while reducing the amount of time admin and clinical teams spend working in their EHR platforms. It also gives patients more control over their healthcare experience, improving the physician-patient relationship and providing a greater sense of autonomy to patients as they navigate what can often feel like an extremely complex and complicated healthcare system.
7. With the focus on reducing physician burnout, how do these updates specifically aim to alleviate the administrative burdens on healthcare providers?
AdvancedMD has always prioritized building healthcare technology that enables effective and efficient workflow processes for ambulatory care providers. We accomplish this through improved automation capabilities that reduce the amount of time healthcare providers and their team spends on tedious tasks and by providing comprehensive analytic reports that enable more informed, and faster, decision-making processes.
MIMIT Health, a Chicago-based practice, reported that its admin team gained an extra four to five hours a day after implementing our platform, significantly reducing the time they spent managing paperwork, resolving billing issues, and troubleshooting claim errors. Every product update we release aims to lessen the load for physicians and their staff while driving productivity.
8. The AdvancedMD 2024 Winter Release mentions security updates. Can you detail these updates and how they secure patient data more effectively?
AdvancedMD is committed to providing safe, secure, and compliant healthcare technology solutions. In addition to ensuring our technology meets standard security regulations, we are continuously updating our infrastructure, platforms, and code to ensure that we have the latest protections in place. Building a secure system is all about building and maintaining layers. With the most recent release we upgraded multiple libraries, modules, and made improvements to the user log-out flow to help increase application security on the user’s local machine.
Considering the recent Change Healthcare cybersecurity incident, AdvancedMD took immediate action to help restore electronic claims processing as quickly as possible and for as many payors as possible. The company also has been sending near-daily updates on the outage and has created a comprehensive FAQ resource that continues to be updated in real time. Anyone impacted by the Change Healthcare outage may subscribe to receive updates from AdvancedMD at: Change Healthcare Outage Status Update Subscription Center.
9. How does the new feature that restricts scheduling of patients with a collections status work, and what impact do you anticipate it will have on practice revenues?
The new feature that restricts scheduling patients with a collections status is a user-level permission control that adds an extra layer of oversight to the scheduling function. With the new feature in place, only authorized users are allowed to bypass the collection warning when scheduling an appointment associated with an account that is in collections. The collection warning offers practices an opportunity to send payment reminders, helping to accelerate patient payments and improve billing management processes.
10. The sunsetting of the “Classic Chart” view represents a significant change. What feedback did you receive that led to this decision, and how have users adapted?
Sunsetting the “Classic Chart” view—and removing the “Back to Classic” toggle—is significant for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it means that all of our customers will now be using the patient chart view (which aligns with the AdvancedMD card framework design) to manage all user preference options connected to the AdvancedMD patient card chart layout. Now, when a role within the platform is updated, all changes are pushed automatically to assigned users. Also, user preference pages are updated to a more intuitive and modern look and feel that aligns with the overall user interface of our practice management solution.
This update directly addresses customer requests for more automation capabilities, as well as feedback we’ve received around preferences for more user-friendly functionality and patient-centered processes. Major system updates can be difficult, especially for software that is relied on by so many users for day-to-day activities, so we are very thoughtful about the updates we release and the pace that we release them, and early feedback has been really positive. Our teams are empathically listening to our client’s feedback, and we continue to make improvements based off that feedback. Our goal is to offer a frictionless experience for our customers and their patients, and this was a big step in that direction.
11. Given the emphasis on improving operational agility, can you share a success story from a practice that has already benefited from these updates?
Because the updates have only recently gone into effect (general availability was rolled out on February 22), it is still too early for customers to offer insights on how the Winter Release has improved their operational agility.
12. With AdvancedMD being named the Zoom 2023 ISV Builder Partner of The Year, how has integrating Zoom-based telehealth improved services for practices and patients?
The Zoom ISV Builder Partner of the Year award was a big win for us and put a spotlight on our ability to provide innovative telehealth solutions for healthcare providers. By integrating Zoom deeply into the AdvancedMD platform, our customers have been able to elevate the patient experience and improve patient outcomes, while also creating more revenue streams for their practice. Telehealth is key to expanding access to care and creating a more equitable healthcare landscape.
As AdvancedMD president Amanda Hansen made clear when we were recognized by Zoom, our telehealth features are a key component of the AdvancedMD platform and integral to our customers’ success. AdvancedMD selected Zoom to power our telehealth capabilities because of its intuitive user interface, world-class video conferencing technology, and exceptional customer support.
Author’s bio:
Tim Costantino is vice president and head of product for AdvancedMD. Prior to joining AdvancedMD, he held multiple leadership positions in both technology and product organizations across the financial and healthcare technology sectors, including positions at SS&C Technologies, StayWell, and National City Bank. Tim earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 2004, with an emphasis in Artificial Intelligence and Psychology from Case Western Reserve University.
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