Small Practice EMRs

Usually when you think of HIMSS, you immediately think of big vendors like Epic or Allscripts showing off their new products. And with this year especially saturated with an influx of health information exchange products on the market, it’s easy to lose sight of products specifically tailored to the smaller practice.

It was refreshing to speak with one information officer, Mike Lorenzen at the Gulf Coast Health Center in Port Arthur, Texas who is using an the EMR/practice management solution from Boardman, Ohio-based Henry Shien MicroMD that is especially tailored to smaller medical practices like his. Last June his health center embarked on its journey from paper to electronic and will in six months be finished scanning the 50,000 charts that dominated the practice.

What Lorenzen liked about his particular EMR choice was that it was much simpler and more user friendly than other systems, and liked the heavy consultation throughout implementation. Lorenzen is excited for the prospect of treating particular populations, like the underserved, with the system’s ability to mine discreet data to satisfy meaningful use reporting requirements. “The more information you have the better decisions you can make,” he says. “It’s also going to give us a huge advantage at looking at where we can expand our practice.”