Back To The Hunt

Let's get back to investigating and exploring some of the EHR's that are out there. I know it is a real jungle, and as I've said before, most programs do exactly the same thing. So how do you narrow down your choices? For me, a good place to start is to watch some videos of the program at work. What does the program look like? Is the layout appealing? Is the screen too cluttered? Are the icons too hard to decipher? How intuitive does the program look? Once you've answered these questions, you can decide whether the program warrants further investigation and perhaps a demo.

GE Wiz

The first program I'll look at in today's post is GE Centricity. To be honest, I really don't know much about this program other than what I've read online. I did not consider Centricity in my search, but that doesn't mean you should overlook it - it's probably a great program. Actually, it has a few things going for it right off the bat. It's put out by a huge company (GE) that is not going to vanish into thin air, it has a fairly large installed base of users, and it has been embraced by a number of hospitals. It comes in different flavors and the private practice version is likely to be quite different than the hospital version, but that's probably a good thing. I took a quick look at the video (shown below) and must say the layout looks very logical. Then again, I didn't really see anything in Centricity that is handled any better than all the other EHR programs. Once again, it comes down to those critical (deal-breaker) features you feel you must have and how easily the EHR can perform them. If you are offered a great deal on this program through your hospital, it's probably worth taking a look at it. I don't know about the practice management integration, that's something you'll have to look into yourself. Here is a short video of GE Centricity:

Since one of the goals of this blog is "audience participation", I urge any readers who are familiar with any of the products I have reviewed here (or even those I have not) to please take part in the discussion by leaving a comment below, or contacting me by email.

Sweet Program

The next program on my list is SuiteMed IMS. Wow - what a pretty program! Very visually appealing. Nice use of colors, decent screen layouts. Yeah, I could definitely like this program. I actually went so far as to have a one-hour online demo with a rep. This program can do just about everything except wash your car (and they may be working on that for the next update). Seriously, this is one very deep program that could easily fit into a busy podiatry practice. My dentist uses a version of this as does my ophthalmologist. So why didn't I choose it for my EHR? Well for one thing, all those pretty screens don't come cheap. This was one of the more expensive EHR programs I considered. The second reason - feature overload. This program has so many features, that for my solo practice I felt it was overkill. I know there are some of you out there that probably use this in your solo practice and love it. But I will wager that there are a whole lot of features you don't use. I just felt using this program would bring out too much OCD-type behavior in me. I also wasn't too thrilled with the nested clicking that is done to complete a note. But then again, to each their own - you may like to produce a note that way. I still think it is a really nice looking program and worth investigating. Here is one of many videos found on YouTube:

I have a few more programs I want to review here, including some that are podiatry-specific. So keep checking back, subscribe, comment and contact me with your questions. Together, we can get through this jungle without getting lost or eaten.

- Roger