Case Study: DocCare
Background
Since the launch of Criterions TCMS product in 1997, DocCare has been utilizing Criterions’ software solutions to increase efficiency in their office. At that time, the practice had three office locations, but have since expanded to seven offices across New York. DocCare has over 23 physician providers who support 18 medical specialties, and operates under the guidance of Dr. Joel Hershey, who has been the with DocCare for over 20 years. In his role as Medical Director, Dr. Hershey oversees the physician staff in their mission to provide high-quality care to patients. After many years of utilizing paper for all patient and office records, the practice made the switch to electronic documentation in 2011 when they implemented Criterions EHR software.
Although there were hesitations moving from paper to an EHR, Dr. Hershey can’t imagine going back to the burdensome process of paper documentation. Over the years, DocCare has added many new features and enhancements to their EHR. Because DocCare is setup on the cloud, any updates made to the software are automatically shared with the entire team. Dr. Hershey says, “There is new functionality and upgrades added often and it's making huge difference for our practice.” These updates help DocCare continually improve the experience for both patients and administrative staff.
In 2011, Dr. Hershey was one of the first doctors involved with the federal and New York State Meaningful Use programs that were implemented. This support helped DocCare achieve government reporting requirements and improve overall quality of care for patients. He shares,
“The Product Manager at Criterions worked closely with me to rebuild our EHR so that it produced all the correct information in the format that the government required, and we were one of the first groups in New York state who began meaningful use.”
Long-Term Success
Over the years, Criterions EHR has continued to grow with the needs of DocCare. The staff love that they are able to easily customize the EHR system setup for each individual employee. Alex Hernandez, IT Manager at DocCare says,
“The training we received from the Criterions team was very helpful. They showed us exactly what the system can do and from there we've been able to customize templates for all positions easily.”
He shares that because they hire new practitioners frequently, it is helpful that the system is intuitive and only takes about a day or two to get used to.
DocCare also appreciates the success they have had using their EHR to adapt to the challenges of 2020. Because of the outbreak COVID-19, practices had to quickly shift from seeing patients in person to meeting virtually. Looking back on this transition, Dr. Hershey recounts, “Last year when we started doing a lot of telemedicine appointments because of COVID-19, we were able to get the appointment types up and running in the same day.”
In addition to optimizing their software to handle telemedicine calls, DocCare was also able to easily contact patients who were at the highest risk of contracting COVID-19 to determine who should be contacted about getting the vaccine.
“We are able to quickly pull reports and send email blasts to specific people based on certain diagnosis groups or age groups,” says Dr. Hershey.
The reporting and emailing options within the Criterions software helped DocCare increase communication with patients, and in turn, increase patient satisfaction. Dr. Hershey explains, “We were able to pull a report in one minute to quickly improve the quality of what we can do.”
DocCare continues to provide comprehensive high quality medical care with the support of Criterions software. Together, we will continue to grow and offer new solutions that will improve the patient experience as well as increase efficiency for DocCare’s administrative staff.