On Friday, December 13, community physicians from around the south Florida area were given the opportunity to see an interactive demonstration of the MCH P.E.D.S. (Pediatric Electronic Data System) Office Edition EHR at Miami Children’s Hospital. The kick-off event, led by Product Specialist Josh Flam, gave doctors the chance to see just how easy it is to use the secure, cloud-based electronic health record software and to ask questions specific to their own practices.“We considered many EHRs for our community-based physician colleagues, and when we came across MediTouch, we saw it as an elegant solution—one that made sense for all of the physicians that we work with,” said Edward Martinez, chief information officer for Miami Children’s Health System. The P.E.D.S. EHR Office Edition is the result of a partnership between Miami Children’s Hospital and MediTouch, developed by HealthFusion.
“The system is easy to use, secure and has all of the bells and whistles that physicians want in an electronic health record system,” Martinez added.
Pediatricians and other health care professionals who use P.E.D.S. can interact directly with Miami Children’s Hospital’s data systems and receive patient information in record time, benefiting the quality of care, according to Martinez. As one of the first EHRs to become Meaningful Use 2–2014 certified, P.E.D.S. also provides physicians with the opportunity to access financial incentives paid by the federal government.
“We just started to utilize the EHR and it has already increased our office efficiencies, which has allowed us to increase patient volume,” explained Julio Egusquiza, M.D., of West Dade Pediatrics. “The templates available in the EHR for a pediatric practice are extremely beneficial since they allow us to proceed through a patient visit effortlessly.”
Dr. Egusquiza adds that the system is easy to implement and simple to use since it is based on how physicians actually conduct a visit. P.E.D.S. includes a robust pediatric module that facilitates quick and secure entry of patient-encounter information, typical of what a pediatrician would see in his or her practice. In addition to pediatric-specific workflow functions, P.E.D.S. also offers a built-in dosing calculator for children’s prescriptions; linkages with immunization registries; pre-loaded developmental milestones and easy-to-produce school and camp forms. The electronic health record is native to the iPad tablet, but also works on all laptop and desktop computers with Internet access.
The benefits are obvious in using this all-cloud system. In the case of Miami Children’s Hospital, the product enables it to use technology to cement its relationships with referring physicians. “Both physicians and hospitals have voiced frustration over the lack of interoperability between different types of electronic health records systems,” explained Dr. Sol Lizerbram, chairman and cofounder of HealthFusion. “P.E.D.S. represents the coming together of community physicians and their affiliated hospitals.”
If the reaction of the physicians at the kick-off event and those who are already using P.E.D.S. is any measurement, this type of private-labeling relationship is likely to grow quickly in the future. Within the next year, Miami Children’s Hospital hopes to have between 500 and 600 providers live on P.E.D.S. and to expand its offerings internationally.
