I’ve been doing some research recently into the long term care EMR market. There’s a number of reasons why I’m interested in this area. One of which was that I met someone at a Las Vegas EMR event who was from a long term care center here in Las Vegas. We didn’t get a chance to talk much, but I was interested to learn more about how EMR software was being used in the long term care market.
I also find this interesting since our EMR has added some new functionality related to extended care as well. We don’t use it in my clinic, but it really is a different model when you might not discharge the patient for a couple years versus a couple hours or less.
I know there are a variety of long term care facilities even including such things as adult day care which kind of fits into that same category also. Does anyone know more about this niche? Anyone know of EMR companies that are trying to serve this niche? I’d like to learn more about what’s going on.
A whole other EMR niche to add to my list of EMR specialties.
There is a Profile against the HL7 Functional Model for long term care – a fairly complete functional requirements document, with conformance criteria.
Peter,
Do you know any EMR companies that have implemented this before?
John,
I am the Digital Marketing Manager for PointClickCare, an on-demand long-term-care-specific software solution.
If you’ve got a few moments to spare, I’d love the opportunity to tell you about what it is we do and how we’re incorporating interoperable technologies to help providers deliver better care to residents of long-term care facilities.
My company (Vocollect Healthcare Systems) creates a point-of-care documentation-by-voice system for long-term care facilities. We’re interested in particular in the modular EMR specification, since we’re a relatively small piece of the puzzle when considering the full EMR. We’re actually working with a number of other long-term care vendors — including PCC! — under the auspices of NASL (http://www.nasl.org/) to put together interoperability guidelines that fit into the EMR specs.
Cameron,
I’m definitely interested in learning more. I’ll shoot you an email so we can hopefully connect.
Chris,
Do you only work with long term care or do you work with all EMR companies? How does your software compare to Dragon NaturallySpeaking and even the new Windows 7 voice recognition?
John,
We currently focus on long-term care, although we have some new market initiatives in other healthcare areas. [1] The speech recognition functionality is different than the systems you name: it’s a limited vocabulary, speaker-dependent recognition system that runs entirely on a custom mobile device, avoiding the need for putting voice over the wireless network.
Regarding EMRs, the NASL effort I mentioned earlier aims to make at least the basics simpler. We’re also tracking the efforts of the CCHIT long-term care working group [2] and aligning what we’re doing with HITSP efforts so that we don’t violate anyone’s EMR certification. The modular EMR certification seems very useful for this, but I’m still relatively new to the area and have a lot of learning to do.
Chris
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS131048+18-Mar-2009+PRN20090318
[2] http://www.cchit.org/workgroups/long-term-and-post-acute-care
Chris,
That’s some really interesting technology. How many installs of the software do you have? What’s the cost for the infastructure to handle all the wireless mobile devices?
I can’t imagine why your service would be a problem with EMR certification. It’s just another data entry and access method. I wouldn’t see why it would be an issue at all. Especially when HHS certification criteria comes out around meaningful use.
[…] short while back I posted about my interest in the long term care EMR market. From that post I’ve started a number of really interesting discussions. It’s been […]
John,
I have come across American HealthTech – a privately held Long Term Care SW company based out of Jackson, MS. They have a decent market share, the founders (25+ years ago) still run the company actively and have kept the ship growing and steady over the course of the past three decades.
Let me know if you would like to know more about them and I could connect you with the management.
Adi,
Thanks for sharing. There are so many options out there. Amazing time to be in the EMR world.