The Pediatric Physicians’ Organization at Children’s (PPOC) Hospital Boston partnered with eClinicalWorks to implement a three-year electronic
medical records (EMR) initiative. eClinicalWorks’ unified electronic medical record and practice management software enables PPOC practices to
deliver the best possible patient care by enabling more efficient, effective, accurate, and safe pediatric medicine.
“Children’s Hospital Boston is a known leader in advancing pediatric medicine,” said Girish Kumar Navani, CEO and co-founder of eClinicalWorks.
“We are proud to partner with their affiliated pediatric primary care practices and are working closely with PPOC members to provide a
comprehensive EMR system to enhance the quality of care delivered. This system is showing substantial benefits, and will continue to offer a
positive impact on the care those children receive.”
Challenges
“ Deliver clinical excellence. The PPOC needed to record and share data in a secure environment so they could monitor and improve
quality without adding the burdens of time-consuming, redundant data entry or IT support to their already busy work days.
“ Improve operational effectiveness. Busy PPOC clinicians wanted to implement an EMR with minimal interruption to their
workflow. This required a partner whose software could flex to meet the specific needs of individual practices instead of medical personnel
flexing to fit the software.
“ Share data. The PPOC’s goal was to improve clinical decision support and the overall health of the population they serve by improving
the quality of, and access to, patient data. With an eye to the future, they are planning to create points of integration with Children’s EMR and
lay the groundwork for delivering Personally Controlled Health Records (PCHRs).
Solutions
“ Highly customizable application benefits diverse practices. The EMR was tailored to each PPOC practice ensuring
that their specific needs were met. eClinicalWorks’ adapted its unified EMR and practice management software, providing pediatric-specific
dosage calculators and immunization forms, and creating custom templates as appropriate.
“ Industry standards minimize risk and leverage investment. The PPOC adhered to standards established by the
Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) to ensure its EMR is well positioned for additional future integration and
functionality in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.
“ Software as a Service (SaaS) model frees up clinicians to focus on patient care. A third-party vendor provided
all site-specific hardware. The PPOC made training clinicians a top priority so they could be up and running as efficiently and effectively
as possible. The IT staff at Children’s manages centralized hosting and support, allowing PPOC practices to focus their time and energy on
providing excellent patient care.
Benefits
“ Ninety percent of practices report financial gain. PPOC practices cite productivity improvements in their billing and front
offices. More accurate and complete coding lead to more consistent reimbursements. Better record keeping means fewer duplicated tests.
Economies of scale in equipment purchases and centralized hosting save practices money.
“ Sixty-seven percent of practices report that the EMR implementation has improved quality of
patient care. Real-time, more accurate patient data is available to practitioners at the point of care. Mistakes attributed to illegible
handwriting have been virtually eliminated.
“ Moving toward consistent, comprehensive community health records. The PPOC collaborated with
eClinicalWorks to capture and report practice data on such conditions as asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and weight
management that currently resides in a variety of locations. They are currently working on centrally managed lab compendiums to ensure
consistency between practices.
