Lemak Sports Medicine Adopts ComplyMD Surgeon Notes

When world class athletes are sidelined, they find Dr. Lawrence Lemak for his orthopaedic expertise. When a world class doctor seeks to improve his documentation, he finds ComplyMD. The solution to healthcare’s archaic documentation process is ComplyMD Surgeon Notes. 

 

“I haven’t seen a noteworthy change in any type of documentation solution since the dinosaur system I saw in 1970″, said Lemak. “We’ve chosen to implement ComplyMD at Lemak Sports Medicine because it’s a type of documentation process we’ve never before seen – and we like it. ComplyMD will revolutionize the way we document our procedures.”

 

Lemak Sports Medicine, located at Brookwood Hospital, consists of three practicing physicians and three fellows. ComplyMD Surgeon Notes is a great fit for Lemak because of their high volume of orthopaedic cases. Scheduled for an early summer implementation, ComplyMD will shift the cumbersome, antiquated process of documentation from redundant dictation/transcription to a smart, physician-friendly tool. ComplyMD enables the vivid documentation of patient health and accompanying procedures, immediately generating complete and accurate data that is instantly available to both his office staff and the hospital/facility staff. The value of ComplyMD’s artificial intelligence intrigued Dr. Lemak. The system adapts to his team’s documentation behavior, allowing them to focus more on patient care and still generate a compliant and complete operative report.

 

“Dr. Lemak is known for excellence in healthcare. We’re delighted he selected ComplyMD Surgeon Notes to be a part of his successful practice,” said Curtis Palmer, CEO of ComplyMD. “His extensive experience will allow us to further develop ComplyMD’s radical process shift in healthcare documentation.”

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ComplyMD allows physicians to vividly document the health of their patients and the procedures administered during their encounters, immeidately generating complete and accurate data for physicians. ComplyMD shifts the documentation process to enhance rich data creation, improve efficiency and maximize productivity in healthcare facilities.

Lemak Sports Medicine: World renowned orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Lawrence J. Lemak, has played an integral role in sports medicine and arthroscopy research. He specializes in sports medicine, arthroscopy and reconstruction of the knee, shoulder, hip and elbow. As a leader in the field of arthroscopy, Dr. Lemak has published articles in numerous medical journals and has given presentations in the United States, England, Europe, Japan and South America. Many professional sports organizations call upon Dr. Lemak’s expertise as he serves as Medical Director for Major League Soccer, NFL Europe, Professional Golf Association and the Ladies Professional Golf Association. He is also Team Physician for many colleges and universities throughout Central Alabama and the Southeast. He is the National Medical Director for PhysioTherapy Associates, a leader in outpatient physical therapy with over 600 locations throughout the country. Dr. Lemak serves as the Associate Dean of Entrepreneurial Medicine at the University of South Florida, and is a Trustee of Alabama State University.

Efficiency, Comprehensiveness and Cost-effectiveness when comparing Dictation and Electronic Templates for Operative Reports

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1560865

Here’s a great article comparing dictation to electronic templates. The results are pretty amazing. Looking at the time, efficiency, comprehensiveness and cost-effectiveness of the two could turn some heads towards electronic templates.

The study was done in Wishard Memorial Hospital’s (Indianapolis, IN) OB-GYN Department. During the four four-week study blocks, they performed 478 procedures on 440 patients corresponding to 5 selected study procedures. They evaluated the effects of templates on timeliness of completion, comprehensiveness and costs, and effort required vs. standard dictation. 

Most in the healthcare industry would agree that: “Dictated reports are frequently incomplete or delayed.” However, it could take some results like the ones in this article to show that: “Electronic note templates could potentially improve this process.”

“Templates resulted in dramatically faster times to the presence of a verified operative report in the medical record compared to dictation services (mean 28 v. 22,440 minutes). Templates increased overall compliance with national standards for operative note documentation and avoided transcription costs. Documentation with templates took slightly more time than dictation (mean 6.77 v. 5.96 minutes; P=0.036), not including the additional time necessary to subsequently verify dictated reports. We conclude that electronic note templates can improve the timeliness and comprehensiveness and operative documentation while decreasing transcription costs and requiring minimal additional effort on the part of the surgeons.”

Canned Operative Reports: How They Can Work For You

“Advise surgeons to avoid the use of “canned” op reports. You know what these are; all the op reports for a particular type of surgery look exactly the same. Most often canned reports will show up for cataract, pain management, and sometimes gastro-intestinal procedures, but they can occur with any specialty.

Medicare and other payers frown on the use of “canned” op reports to document procedures. They can also be an issue for both the ASC’s and physician’s malpractice insurance carrier—such as when complications aren’t documented in the rare instance when they do occur.

If the physician performs similar procedures and wishes to use some sort of template, he or she must tailor it adequately to each patient’s individual surgery and circumstances for use, and it shouldn’t appear to be ‘canned.’”

“Tip: Avoid ‘Canned’ Op Reports”. Ellis Medical Consulting, Inc. Ambulatory Surgery Reimbursement Update. HCPro. May 2008.

Canned operative reports can work against you, if used in the wrong way. However, our approach to canned reports greatly differs. Many physicians perform the same procedures over and over and over again; therefore, dictating much of the same information over and over and over again, with slight variations here and there according to complications and specific patient information. With repetitious dictation, facilities will incur unnecessary transcription costs for this dictation. Not only is repetitious dictation unnecessarily costly, it’s time consuming for the physician. ComplyMD’s web-based software enables physicians to document procedures (in code-ready language), attaching their own customized canned operative report, already typed and ready to be sent to the coder’s office.

Accurate Charge Capture: Help Physicians Acquire Appropriate Documentation

“With profit margins squeezed so tightly in the healthcare industry, it’s hard not to think that any loss of revenue would not affect the bottom line. Accurate charge capture and claims denial management processes mean not only improving cash flow, but also protecting revenue that the provider is entitled to—and that all adds up to a healthier bottom line.”

“Improving Cash Flow with Better Charge Capture & Denial Management” MedAssets & HFMA. October 2005

Yes. We are all aware of tightly squeezed profit margins. But, do we know how to improve those profit margins? Accurate charge capture and claims denial management are two such areas that could help improve a healthcare organization’s bottom line. Let’s look at inaccurate charge capture vs. accurate charge capture. Inaccurate charge capture can be caused for several reasons, such as undercoding (loss of revenue), overcoding (risk of fraud), lack of knowledge in accurate documentation, lack of tools to capture accurate charges, etc. The list goes on and on.

Do You Equip Your Physicians with the Proper Tools?

“Hospitals across the country lose multiple millions of dollars every year due to mismanagement of the billing process. No matter the size of the organization, billing inconsistencies affect all healthcare facilities to some degree—even those that are on top of the problem. On average, providers lose 5 percent of gross revenues, and that can translate into millions of dollars for a single organization.”

“Improving Cash Flow with Better Charge Capture & Denial Management” MedAssets & HFMA. October 2005

As we all know, profit margins are tightly squeezed in the healthcare industry. The billing process has a huge impact on those profit margins. What do facilities bill for? Patient encounters. How do they know what to bill for? Through physician documentation. How will these patient encounters be properly documented? There… you’re stumped. It’s not through dictation after the fact, and it’s not on their 3×5 index card they carry around in their pockets.