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.

ComplyMD: Surgeon Notes for Documentation

ComplyMD offers Surgeon Notes for physician’s OR documentation. It’s a tough job to capture the physician’s attention while he/she’s in the OR. The focus is on the patient – where it should very well be. But, once physicians are done with procedures, where does their attention go? Oftentimes, they’ll pick up a dictaphone, or jot down notes on their index card, or even rotate into the very next OR to begin the next procedure. ComplyMD is different. It can almost appear as disruptive, but don’t let that scare you away from the concept. ComplyMD captures the physician’s attention and directs it towards accurate, real-time, rich documentation of exactly what went on in that very OR with that very patient. And after documenting with ComplyMD Surgeon Notes, the physician is done. That’s it.

Better Documentation – Why It’s So Crucial

A great article by Selena Chavis in For The Record magazine, gives us all a little insight into WHY documentation is so important. A few of the summarized reasons include:
• Quality of patient care
• Patient safety and outcomes
• Compliance
• Revenue cycle management

So we see that documentation doesn’t just affect compliance and revenue cycle management….it extends all the way to patient safety and quality of care. Think about it: Of course better documentation would give you a better picture of what’s really going on with your patient, thus you are able to make better decisions for their course of care.

Chief privacy officer and executive director with Georgia-based Wellstar Health System, Beth Kost-Woodrow says, “[Better documentation is] the one piece that sets the stage for success or failure in many areas of hospital operations and patient care.” I believe she is right. Better documentation not only affects the facility, but the physician as well. “As hospital and physician profiling on the Internet has increased scrutiny, many experts suggest that attitudes are changing and the time may be ripe for a renewed focus on documentation improvement programs.”

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.”

Do You Know What The Financial Success of Your Facility Hinges Upon?

“Documentation is an intrinsic component of every patient encounter. The financial success of a facility depends upon the completeness of the process. The major factor affecting the quality of an organization’s data (and therefore its revenue stream) is the accuracy of documentation. If you are not already convinced of the importance of accuracy in documentation, a study by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) found that of all of the improper Medicare benefit payments made during 2001, 43% were due to documentation errors. It is well known that patient quality of care is also related to quality of documentation. Furthermore, documentation is essential to meet the changing demands of regulatory bodies such as The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and CMS.”

“Documentation: The 30,000 Foot View”. Today’s Wound Clinic. Caroline Fife, MD, FAAFP, CWS. May 2008

Accurate documentation is vastly important for several reasons, as it proves the quality of an organization’s data, accuracy of reimbursements, improved compliance and overall quality of patient care. And yes, the financial success of any facility does depend on the accuracy and completeness of documentation.

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.