Nearly 9 in 10 office-based physicians use an electronic health records (EHR) system, but nearly a third report plans to switch to a different EHR vendor by 2021. If your practice has not yet migrated to an EHR or is exploring options for another system, consider the offerings from NextGen Healthcare Systems. NextGen offers a variety of software solutions for healthcare professionals, but it’s known primarily for its electronic health records and enterprise practice management suites in ambulatory and ASC care. Plus, NextGen’s advanced tools can help your practice increase quality scores and revenue, all while improving the patient experience. NextGen’s customizable, user-friendly design can get you up and running quickly. Below find a NextGen EHR overview of the software and support features.
NextGen Electronic Health Record (EHR)
An EHR system goes beyond simply digitizing patients’ medical charts. An EHR can provide comprehensive health information about your patients not just at your practice, but from all clinicians involved in patients’ care, including laboratories, specialists, pharmacies, and emergency facilities. NextGen’s built-in tools help you manage patient care with less effort. With the NextGen EHR, you can share data, manage population health and prevent medical errors, among many other benefits.
NextGen EHR includes all the key features your providers need to manage patients’ care and create complete clinical documentation. These features include:
- Clinical tasking
- Lab, radiology, and immunization interfaces
- ePrescribing & PDMP integration
- Customizable preferences settings
- Referral management
- Workflow screens
- Customization options with NextGen Template Editor and SQL so you can create the templates you need to support your clinical workflows
- Built-in tools to schedule and host virtual visits without leaving the EHR
- An upgraded Assessment, Plan, Subjective, Objective (APSO) format that lets providers view all documentation across multiple visits to complete paperwork more easily
- An API to integrate with
Your NextGen system also prevents costly medical errors through:
- Customizable alerts to prevent prescribing, coding and documentation errors
- Health maintenance and care guidelines reminders
- Chronic disease management
- Clinical decision support tools to help providers make faster diagnoses and follow the latest treatment guidelines
If your practice takes part in value-based medicine or quality improvement programs like the Medicare Quality Payment Program, your NextGen EHR can help you track and improve key quality measures. Simplify quality reporting with NextGen EHR tools like:
- Clinical quality measure reporting with NextGen HQM
- Population health tools to help you track your patient population and meet your quality goals
- Robust reporting and data analytics to help you track your practice’s clinical, quality and financial progress
- TempDev’s Quality Measure Dashboard to help you improve your HEDIS, UDS, MIPS, and other quality initiatives
To improve your patients’ health, your practice also needs to share data with hospitals and other providers. NextGen EHR fully complies with interoperability requirements including the 21st Century Cures Act and includes robust data sharing and interoperability tools, such as
- Interoperability and data sharing across systems with NextGen Share, SureScripts Direct Messaging, and Carequality
- An API for data sharing and integration
- NextGen Mobile to give providers access to your NextGen EHR system from anywhere
NextGen Practice Management (EPM)
Practice management systems automate and streamline your administrative and billing functions. Implementing a practice management system will make your practice more efficient and help you see areas for improvement in your office visit and billing workflows. A practice management system typically enables staff to capture patient demographics, manage charge capture, perform billing, generate reports, check insurance eligibility, and schedule appointments. NextGen EPM fully integrates with NextGen EHR to let your practice schedule appointments, document office visits, and bill for your services all in one place.
Key features of NextGen’s Enterprise Practice Management (EPM) include:
- Appointment management and scheduling
- Billing and statements management
- Background Business Processor (BBP) to automate common procedures, such as claims generation, running reports and printing statements.
- Worklog and task assignment
- Claims management
- Office and ASC billing
- Robust reporting solutions to support analysis of appointment workflows, provider coding habits, front desk procedures and revenue cycle management
- NextGen Patient Experience Platform, including a newly redesigned Patient Portal, to let patients schedule their appointments, get cost estimates, pay bills and communicate with their providers from anywhere
Advantages of Using NextGen Healthcare Software
The NextGen Healthcare EHR and EPM system takes very little build to go live. This sets it apart from many enterprise-level EHRs and practice management systems. NextGen also allows users to develop both the front-end and back-end of the system. Your practice can customize your NextGen system to your needs. This customization is helpful for organizations that need to meet specific quality initiatives, clinics with specialized payment processes (such as ASCs, FQHC, CHC, and Family Planning clinics), and small sub-specialties.
NextGen EPM & EHR are KLAS leaders, because the system is so customizable, enabling you to better meet the needs of clinics, payers, and integrations. Access to the back-end also allows for custom development, reporting, and interface support. NextGen developers like TempDev can help your practice customize your NextGen system to suit your needs.
Advantages of NextGen EHR and EPM: Reporting and Analytics
NextGen’s Reporting allows you to set your practice’s benchmarks and monitor your progress. You can also compare your practice to peer practices and payer targets in real-time. If the standard reports don’t meet your needs, you can develop custom reports from your EHR and EPM data. Third-party developers like TempDev can help you create the custom reports you need to support your practice’s goals.
You also can develop custom reports and dashboards using your NextGen EPM data. TempDev has developed several customizable reports to help you keep track of provider coding habits, appointment workflows, front-desk workflows, and revenue cycle management.
Advantages of NextGen EHR and EPM: Interoperability and Integration
NextGen EHR and EPM are fully integrated to give you access to all of your clinical, administrative and financial data in one place. You can also integrate NextGen with your General Ledger System to support error-free accounting and financial reporting. NextGen’s Patient Portal (formerly Medfusion) also supports integrated patient satisfaction surveys to help you stay on top of patient satisfaction metrics and improve the patient experience.
The NextGen EHR and EPM systems comply with interoperability requirements from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT. With NextGen, you can seamlessly share data with your patients’ other providers, including hospitals, to support integrated and coordinated care. You can also reduce duplicative testing and speed up referrals through Health Information Exchange (HIE). Finally, NextGen supports patient access to their medical data through the Patient Portal, helping to engage patients in their care.
Advantages of NextGen EHR and EPM: Streamlined Workflows
NextGen EHR and EPM is a user-friendly system designed for ASCs & ambulatory care practices. This means that NextGen does not focus on hospital functions that are not relevant to your practice. Instead, NextGen fits into the office visit workflows of primary care practices, clinics, and specialty practices.
In the EHR, workflow templates guide users through the processes integral to completing tasks that improve the efficiency of the flow of patients through your practice or the flow of patient information, including clinical, demographic, and billing data. Common tasks include:
- Pre-visit tasks, such as appointment scheduling, collecting patient information and verifying insurance eligibility.
- Patient intake and registration.
- Clinical tasks, including coding diagnoses and procedures and documenting the visit and care plan.
- Ordering labs, tests and prescriptions, as well as managing medication and test results.
- Charge capture and billing.
- Patient check-out.
All practices operate differently and have varying business needs. You can customize your NextGen system to fit your workflows. To get the most out of your system, you may also need to redesign some of your workflows to integrate fully with NextGen. Third-party consultants and developers like TempDev can help you with workflow redesign, develop custom templates and customize your system to meet your needs.
How TempDev Can Help with NextGen EHR and EPM
TempDev’s team of NextGen consultants, developers, project managers ,and trainers can support you with every step of your NextGen journey. From implementation and upgrades to customization and integration, TempDev has the expertise you need to get or keep your system running smoothly.
Call us at 888.TEMP.DEV or contact us here to get started with NextGen EHR and PM.