An independent pediatric practice is more than a medical home for children -- it’s a business centered on families and community. A pediatric EHR can deliver the personalized care tools pediatricians value and can help practices care for their business, too. It can seem impossible to make the switch, but it’s worth it. Here are three pediatric practices who made the switch to a new EHR and recommend that you do, too. Read more to learn the value they gain in their relationship with Physician’s Computer Company.
More than an EHR: Analytics to Help Define Milestones and Growth
How many newborns did your practice see last month? How is your adolescent vaccine rate? If your practice management system or EHR can’t answer these questions, it can be difficult to track and understand the ways your practice can define and meet certain goals. Goals and growth aren’t just for the kids -- they help better serve your patients and meet business goals like increased revenue too. One such practice had a goal to switch from paper to their first EHR -- they made the switch to PCC, and found that making the switch was revolutionary.
Dr. Christine Cordell, MD FAAP, of Redmont Pediatrics in Birmingham, Alabama, switched to PCC EHR in 2019. She says that the Dashboard’s tools and analytics tracking has helped her practice find financial stability and growth.
According to the practice’s PCC Dashboard results, the proprietary analytics and benchmarking tool, the practice had opportunities for some financial benchmarks like AR and pricing. After 2 years of steady work, the practice’s revenue-per-visit is up, AR days are down, AR days, and the Dashboard continues to help the physicians get paid appropriately and help Redmont Pediatrics understand how they measure up against similar practices across the U.S. Their financial success is a milestone worth celebrating, as it means that the practice has the bandwidth to expand in other ways, from caring for Medicaid patients to achieving an even better balance between business and clinical care.
Whatever your goals are -- whether you want to increase revenue or have the best record in your state for vaccinations, expert analytics can help you get there. PCC offers more than a great EHR for pediatricians -- its Dashboard tools help you see real time opportunities for growth. While Redmont Pediatrics had a revolution moving from paper to EHR, the payoffs in stability are leading them to greater success. Read more about Redmont’s story with PCC.
True Support That Builds Trust
When you call PCC’s support team, you speak with a real person with intimate knowledge of PCC’s inner workings so that your question is answered quickly, so you can get back to your patients. That’s why a support team focused on strong business relationships, without the anonymity and stress of a traditional support call, was so important for Tommie Angel, the office manager of Sanford Pediatrics of Sanford, North Carolina.
Pediatricians bring personalized care to communities because they understand kids’ day to day environment and history and can deliver exactly the care they need. PCC’s Support team has a similar commitment to understanding both the history of practices’ needs and their day to day environment in order to provide the best solutions: customized tools, reports, and honest feedback. So while Tommie anticipated switching EHRs would be stressful, she soon found that PCC’s support made it anything but.
When Tommie Angel needed reports and analytics to help Sanford Pediatrics deliver on their individual, state, and national projects, she was thrilled that she had both PCC’s Support team and her Client Advocate to answer her questions and provide proactive solutions. She can call Support and speak to familiar voices to help answer her questions promptly, and from her Client Advocate she gets personalized weekly feedback and support from someone actively involved in customizing the EHR with reports and tools just for Sanford Pediatrics.
A practice’s Client Advocate is their primary contact at PCC, and acts as a champion and expert problem-solver for a practice’s questions and goals. Tommie Angel found that having award-winning support from her Client Advocate Jim Smith has helped her to refine and meet Sanford Pediatrics’ goals every week. He recommends reports and tools and customizes them to fit Tommie’s needs exactly, from analytics support to adolescent vaccine information. Get Tommie’s full Success Story here.
Resources for the Pediatrician-Business Owner
Being a pediatrician is rewarding but hard work. Independent pediatricians who have an ownership stake in their practice must work even harder to grow as medical professionals and business owners. Dr. Laura Windham began her leadership experience when she became an owner of Chapel Hill Children & Adolescents’ Clinic in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 2015. When she realized her previous EHR solution charged additional fees for analytics and lacked the support she wanted to learn to make the right decisions for her practice, she knew it was time to move on. Dr. Windham decided the practice needed an EHR and practice management system that would help her and her team learn and grow in and out of the EHR.
Dr. Windham likes that in PCC EHR she can customize her templates and reports to fit the way she wants to practice medicine. Because the EHR is built for pediatricians, she can easily toggle between sibling patients and tag-team patients with multiple users in the patient chart at one time.
After her visits are complete for the day, Dr. Windham loves that PCC’s myriad resources can answer almost any question she has, from practice management to billing. She especially enjoys connecting with fellow pediatricians via the AAP’s Section on Administration and Practice Management (SOAPM) and the Pediatric Management Institute, who often have experienced situations similar to hers and can offer their advice. Every practice has unique needs, and Dr. Windham can gather data from her colleagues to help make the best decision for Chapel Hill Children & Adolescents Clinic from her very own network of PCC practices across the U.S. PCC practices can connect via the annual Users’ Conference, compare analytics anonymously via the Dashboard tool, and connect personally through PCC Community, a users-only forum.
According to Dr. Windham, resources like these have helped her become less anxious and more confident as a physician-owner of a pediatric practice. With PCC’s support, she has the room to grow as a leader, get the answers she needs, and spend more time doing what she always wanted to before she made the switch to PCC -- caring for her patients and business.
She says, “I’ve learned a tremendous amount in the last five years and I’m very grateful -- I’m very happy to be working with PCC now, I really am.” Visit the full story to learn why Dr. Windham loves her pediatric-specific EHR.
When an EHR cares about pediatrics, pediatricians can access better tools and resources to deliver the best care possible to kids and communities. Learn more about Dr. Windham, Dr. Cordell, and Tommie Angel’s stories, and how their practices learn and grow with PCC’s EHR and practice management services by reading their Success Stories.
