There’s a certain satisfaction to be gained by having the right tools for the job at hand, and this applies in the world of pediatric electronic health records (EHRs) as much as it does elsewhere in life. When you’re using a generic tool, don’t expect more than a generic result. By using a pediatric ehr + emr developed specifically for your task, however, you can expect to see results like the 30% increase in payments Bi-County Pediatrics had when they switched from a generic EHR system to a pediatric-specific one.

Issues Facing Pediatric Practices

Just what is so special about using a system developed for pediatric practices, though? If your office is working with an adult-based EHR (or still using paper charts!) you’ll experience a significant number of improvements by switching to a pediatric EHR.

For example, let’s consider the pressing issues facing many pediatric practices, which are:

• Vaccine inventory management,
• Time pressures during patient appointments,
• Ensuring patient compliance with the AAP’s periodicity schedule, and
• Optimizing the profitability of your practice.

If you could resolve all of those in one swoop, wouldn’t you consider that to be a good day’s work? I would. The good news is that now you can do so, by changing to a pediatric EHR system that offers the right options.

Top Pediatric EHR Features

The best pediatric EHR systems avoid the typical “shotgun” approach of many large systems. They don’t try to offer services for every type of specialty, but instead, they are laser-focused on delivering a good pediatric experience. This includes features such as:

#1: Vaccine Inventory Tracking

For most pediatric practices, vaccines are the second largest expense item after salaries. Managing supplies is vital to optimizing cash flow and profitability. Few existing EHR vendors have a good system for managing vaccine inventory, and fewer still make it possible to project future requirements.

Bonus: When your practice no longer needs to dedicate staff time to inventory count, you not only avoid incurring additional costs and inconvenience, but you close the door on the risk of human error.

#2: Making the Most of Supplier Incentives

A good pediatric EHR should have an inventory management module that enables you to:

• see exactly what you have available and its financial value,
• adjust the count as you administer vaccines,
• track expiry dates, and
• project your private and VFC stock for the 30, 60 or 90 days ahead.

This allows you to take advantage of manufacturers’ incentives.

Bonus: Practices can improve their cash flow using the “just in time” method of ordering the vaccines and other supplies when they need them, while avoiding tying up large amounts of funds.

#3: Identifying and Communicating with Patients

Instead of your team having to create a whole slate of templates the system didn’t have available, a good pediatric EHR is able to supply those. Source information from your database to identify patients due for 30-month well-visit recalls and the best method of contacting them.

Bonus: Following up keeps patients in compliance with proper healthcare protocols while ensuring your practice doesn’t leave money on the table. That’s a win-win for all parties involved.

#4: Improved Charting Options

A well-run pediatric practice should be able to strike a balance between the amount of time spent with a patient and that of charting the examination efficiently. A pediatric EHR should have multiple preloaded templates for all types of sick visits, which enables the physician to see at a glance what to examine, provide an assessment, and chart the visit in seconds.

Bonus: This not only reduces the time spent on paperwork but creates a system of checks and balances to lower the risk of oversight.

Reaping the Benefit

By making the shift to a pediatric EHR, practices can reap the benefit of healthier patients and higher revenue. And if you choose the right system, you no longer need to make a huge capital outlay. A pediatric EHR program operating on the basis of a monthly subscription enables you to break even much earlier in the lifecycle.

Bonus: If you’re still not sure a pediatric EHR is the best option for you, download this eBook to discover how a well-rounded EHR may be limiting your practice.

Sometimes, you can have too much of a good thing. When it comes to choosing an electronic health record (EHR) solution, less is actually more if you’re in a pediatrics practice. That’s because a well-rounded adult-centric EHR is likely to be less helpful than one specially built for your area of expertise.

Statistics from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology show 86.9% of office-based physicians already had an EHR back in 2015. A report two years later from Medical Economics showed 43% had used three or more EHRs, however, mostly as a result of dissatisfaction with the systems they chose initially.

Most EHR solutions offer features such as:

• tracking the patients’ medical history
• previous diagnoses
• current and former medication and treatment plans
• allergies and test results
• practice inventory management

So, how is a pediatric EHR different? In quite a number of ways, actually, but we’ve highlighted three to start you thinking about the possibilities.

Supports Timely Decision-Making

To make the right patient care decisions at the right time, it’s vital for physicians to have accurate information available. An adult-centric EHR with default programming, for example, is unlikely to deliver a warning for a blood pressure reading of 120/80. If the patient is a 10-year old child, this BP level is too high to go unaddressed.

A pediatric EHR, however, uses exact measurements for vitals that are calibrated according to the patient’s age and other factors. This reduces the margin for error and helps you to make appropriate choices for your patient.

Enables Vaccination Management

With vaccinations continuing to be a hot-button issue in 2019, having enough vaccine inventory is critical to be certain you can provide immunizations for your patients as and when they are needed. Otherwise, you could miss opportunities to vaccinate, which can cause inconvenience for the patient and their family. More importantly, if a child is exposed to a preventable illness because the vaccination wasn’t available, it’s a potential legal minefield for your practice.

At the same time, many vaccines are perishable substances that need to be stored safely and used within a certain timeframe. Since vaccinations are a major income stream for pediatric physicians, and practices work with much larger quantities of vaccines than adult-centric practices do, you’ll want the pediatric EHR you choose to be optimized for managing these.

Protects Adolescents’ Privacy

Data privacy is one of the biggest areas of concern these days, but in contemporary families, there’s often a sense that a child’s business is the parent’s business. That may apply to many things in life, but when it comes to medical records it’s not strictly true. Teens who need treatment for conditions like STDs, contraception or even eating disorders may not want their parents to have access to everything, and since the sharing of information doesn’t apply to most adult-centric EHRs, practices using them might not have any options beyond disabling certain features to prevent access.

With data driving the success of practices, you can ill afford when you treat an adolescent to have incomplete access to their records, however.  A pediatric EHR solution will equip you to store the records you need but without making them available for parental viewing.

If you’re still not sure a pediatric-specific EHR is the best option for you, download this eBook to discover how a well-rounded EHR may be limiting your practice.