Care Connect for Community Physicians

Leadership & financial commitment

Your practice’s leadership commitment to Care Connect will be essential to ensure the success of the Care Connect adoption, as well as the financial commitment to bring it to full fruition. Things to consider:

• Strong physician leadership and commitment are required for success
  
• Both the practice manager and a designated physician champion are needed to lead all practice staff to full adoption
  
• The physician champion must have a good understanding of their practice’s operational controls and work processes
  
• Embrace change, including disruption of office flow and work processes during implementation, as the entire practice moves forward into the digital world of Care Connect
  
• The financial investment in the Care Connect Community Physician Program is greater than the obvious project costs Implicit costs include system set-up and learning activities, as well as the soft costs of reduced productivity during the initial learning curve
  
• All members of the practice must understand that this learning curve can only be overcome through knowledge and persistent effort, which may require a reduced schedule for the first couple of weeks

Operational & technical readiness

Excellent operational readiness and technical competence will also be necessary for a smooth implementation of Care Connect. To ensure your practice is ready to subscribe to Care Connect, our support team will gladly work with you to conduct an initial assessment of your practice and answer all of your questions. Things to consider:

• For a successful implementation, the practice should be fully staffed, running smoothly and not undergoing any significant changes.
  
• Leadership and staff will need to be adaptable to substantial changes in the clinical workflows that are inherent in implementing Care Connect.
  
• Your computer and network technology must meet the Rochester Regional Health requirements and be well supported by a qualified technician(s).

• Streamlined templates for simpler, faster and more accurate documentation of patient encounters with options for voice recognition or note transcription. Note: Additional fees apply for Rochester Regional transcription services and voice recognition software
• One integrated system for practice registration, scheduling, visit documentation and billing
• Automatic e-prescribing functionality that increases efficiency
• Streamlined integration with Epic’s professional billing application through clinical workflows
• Up-to-the-minute patient information and Rochester Regional results data immediately interfaced to, and available within, Care Connect
  
  

Care Connect is a feature-rich, ambulatory-based EMR and Practice Management system.

Just some of the features include:

• Nursing and physician documentation
• E-prescribing
• Health maintenance templates
• Immunization schedules
• Orders
• Referral capabilities

...and many other clinical reporting and data sharing capabilities for patients within the Care Connect system.

EMR

The Care Connect Community Physician Program includes Care Connect, the branded name for the Rochester Regional Health Epic Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. Epic is widely recognized as the vendor with the most advanced, fully integrated electronic medical record system on the market today.

Care Connect is designed for specialty-specific office workflows, visit documentations and orders, and just some of its features include:

• Access to Rochester Regional results in the clinical data repository
• Automatic e-prescribing functionality
• Standardized reports
• Low volume point of service scanning
• ICD-9 and CPT files to aid in coding for easy diagnosis and order entry
• Future upgrades to ICD-10 and ICD-11
  
  
  

Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs require the use of certified EHR technology. Standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for EHR technology have been adopted by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. EHR technology must be tested and certified by an Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ATCB) in order for a provider to qualify for EHR incentive payments.

Care Connect is a Meaningful Use-certified EHR.

As a Care Connect subscriber, your practice has the opportunity to earn up to $64,000 if you enroll in Medicaid or up to $44,000 if you enroll in the Medicare program.

Rochester Regional Health and GRIPA will assist you in meeting the necessary Meaningful Use requirements to help ease the burden, confusion and complexity of this process.

Additionally, with Care Connect, ICD-10 and future Meaningful Use upgrade requirements are included at no additional cost and are implemented automatically. No other EHR can provide this additional value!

New York eHealth Collaborative

New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) works to improve the healthcare of New York residents through health information technology.

NYeC receives state and federal funding to develop policies and standards, assist healthcare providers to make the change to electronic medical records and connect health care providers across the state.

NYeC provides training and consulting services for healthcare providers, spanning from how to adopt new technologies to how to achieve Meaningful Use.

View NYEC's Website to Learn More.