Practice Fusion, the nation’s largest electronic health record (EHR) platform, recently announced a guarantee that its free EHR will be 2014 Meaningful Use-ready by the end of 2013. With 100,000 medical professionals currently active each month, the company will instantly become the largest population of physicians equipped for Meaningful Use Stage 2 when certification testing is completed later this year. The Practice Fusion guarantees is backed with an offer to pay up to $5,000 in EHR costs for any new customer who switches to a different EHR if Practice Fusion’s certification timing is not met.
Since first becoming certified in 2011, Practice Fusion has delivered over $150 million in Meaningful Use incentives to doctors in ambulatory medical practices. The company is rated No. 1 in Meaningful Use by Brown-Wilson, with 96.5% of users confident about meeting Stage 2 requirements. Currently, over 400 new medical practices sign up for Practice Fusion each week with the intent of working toward Meaningful Use incentives, with one in four of those switching from a different EHR system. The company has had to grow the capacity of its implementation team by 34% in the past month to accommodate demand.
“Meaningful Use has to be drama-free for doctors,” said Ryan Howard, founder and CEO of Practice Fusion. “Being a cloud service means that our Meaningful Use upgrade process is free from the chaos that so many medical practices are currently facing. The response we’ve seen from the medical community this fall has been overwhelming. Practice Fusion is the only vendor that can remove the cost and risks of Meaningful Use upgrades, allowing doctors to collect their stimulus checks without stress.”
An estimated 90% of ambulatory EHR vendors will not be certified for 2014 Meaningful Use by January 1, the first reporting period deadline. CMS estimates the average cost of upgrading a legacy EHR system to be $10,000 per physician each year. Server-based EHRs are facing a particularly difficult technical challenge trying to roll out updated software and set up connections to labs and imaging centers by working with each individual client installation.
“After spending $60,000 on an EHR system where the vendor went bankrupt on installation day and never showed up to my practice, I switched to Practice Fusion over the course of a weekend,” said Dr. Andrew Bronstein, an Orthopaedic Hand & Microvascular surgeon based in Las Vegas. “Through Practice Fusion my transition was simple and Meaningful Use qualification has been automatic and worry-free. I view my story of EHR calamity as an opportunity to help other doctors find a successful path toward Meaningful Use.”
Medical professionals can sign up for Practice Fusion online anytime and be live with their new EHR system in just five minutes with no cost. Unlimited Meaningful Use support and integration with local labs and imaging centers are included in Practice Fusion’s free price. In a survey earlier this year, 83% of Practice Fusion users reported that the company’s Meaningful Use dashboard is excellent or above average and only 29% reported that it was difficult to achieve Meaningful Use
