Practice Fusion Essay Example

community. It eliminates the database issues of the past, and all of this comes at no cost to the physician. The creator of Practice Fusion utilizes advertising as a means to generate income and to connect doctors with drugs and products that may be of interest to them. The website also provides information on how health plans and hospitals can work together and directly engage with patients through Practice Fusion to establish Disease and Wellness Outreach Programs.

The explanation of this part is unclear and lacks concrete examples of how it can be achieved. Additionally, Practice Fusion's homepage does not clearly define what the application is offering. Practice Fusion aims to enhance care by offering free, web-based electronic health records to physicians and their practices. Given the growing complexity in the healthcare sector, we believe that there is an urgent requirement for health technologies that lower expenses and preserve lives. Practice Fusion has developed a comprehensive and fully certified electronic health record system specifically for small and mid-size physician practices.

Practice Fusion has developed user-friendly features for your entire practice, including check-in, charting, prescription sending, lab orders, and referrals. The company has gained recognition for its contribution in the digital health information field, particularly in health records. Since its establishment in 2005, Practice Fusion has aimed to revolutionize Healthcare IT by offering doctors and their practices a free, web-based electronic medical records (EMR) platform.

Practice Fusion, with its successful EMR software, is expanding its platform by launching Patient Fusion. This new website aims to become the Salesforce.com for doctors and for healthcare. Patient Fusion allows users to compare doctor reviews and book

appointments within an hour of arriving at the doctor's office. This move puts Practice Fusion in competition with ZocDoc, combining Yelp-like reviews with an Uber-style on-demand booking service.

Unlike Yelp, Patient Fusion collects ratings from patients after their visits to doctors' offices. This enables the company to create a database of verified reviews and develop a local physician search engine. With millions of reviews currently available, Practice Fusion is expanding its services by introducing a free tool that assists patients in managing their health expenses.

Now, Patient Fusion not only allows users to book appointments and access digital health records, but also enables them to monitor their health expenses throughout their entire medical visit record. Officially launching in beta today, this platform is accessible to Practice Fusion patients who are covered by national health insurance providers such as Anthem Blue Cross and United. If the initial launch of Patient Fusion brought the company into the realm of Yelp (and ZocDoc), then its new complimentary service signifies the start of Practice Fusion’s own rendition of Mint.com for healthcare.

Practice Fusion partners with Microsoft Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market to offer 15,000 de-identified medical records for research projects. This research information is used by top universities to gain new insight into healthcare delivery and is compliant with HIPAA. It powers clinical research for drug interactions, disease outbreak monitoring, and other public health initiatives.

These records contain information on various aspects of patient health, including vital signs such as blood pressure, respiratory rate, BMI, temperature, and more. They also include details on diagnoses, with ICD-9 codes, start and stop dates. Medication information is also

provided, including NDC codes, medication names, strengths, schedule, start and stop dates. The records also cover prescriptions, representing events where medication is prescribed. Additionally, immunization records are included, with details on vaccine names and dates administered. Allergy information is also documented, including type, date, reaction, related medication NDC code, and severity.

Practice Fusion's platform, Patient Fusion, offers comprehensive and valuable national health insights. It allows users to monitor and visualize their health costs, such as out-of-pocket expenses and deductibles, by combining patients' health information with family health bills. This assists users in better planning their flexible spending account (FSA) contributions and estimating future doctor's office visits costs.

The new service includes insurance claims information, allowing patients to access and assess their claims history. This enables them to identify rejected, accepted, and potentially disputed claims. By improving their ability to manage health bills, the company believes that doctors may benefit from more accurate and timely payments.

Patient Fusion offers a free and simplified way to track health expenses, allowing people to view out-of-pocket expenses, insurance coverage, and the remaining balance of their deductible. This is particularly beneficial for doctors and practices already using Patient Fusion's EMR platform, as they can now direct their patients to its appointment booking and expense tracking tool without the high costs of ZocDoc or similar services. Additionally, having access to a large network of medical professionals using Patient Fusion's EMR software provides ready-made scale for its new tool.

The new service will be appealing to startups such as Simplee. Simplee, which introduced its own service called "Mint.com for healthcare expenses" and medical wallet in 2011, aimed to

help individuals keep track of visits, monitor benefits, and make online payments. In recent times, Simplee has expanded its services by introducing a payment and loyalty platform in hospitals to improve bill distribution digitally. Additionally, they have launched a mobile app that enables users to pay their family's medical bills conveniently via their smartphones.

Simplee has processed over $2 billion in medical bills so far. Now, Patient Fusion is offering a similar service, bringing the two companies into direct competition. However, Patient Fusion's service currently only supports expense management and does not include bill payments or a mobile component. Although Simplee's platform is currently more comprehensive, it is expected that Patient Fusion will soon fill in the missing features and close the gap.

As the company expands its health platform, it may integrate with popular health-tracking devices such as Fitbit. This will bring Practice Fusion into competition with a new group of startups and companies. It is unclear which tools patients will find easier to use, but given the high cost of healthcare, any assistance in this area would be greatly appreciated by the average American. Referrals can be accessed directly from your charting workflow, allowing you to send a patient referral as you complete your chart note.

Referrals are sent directly within the EHR, allowing colleagues to receive each other’s medical referrals in real-time. This provides the speed and convenience of instant messaging while remaining HIPAA-compliant, unlike traditional e-referral. The collaborative messaging feature allows for instant confirmation from colleagues on the status of medical referrals. Patients no longer have to wait for a response as colleagues can quickly send a referral

response within the EHR to confirm the request.