Practice Fusion is an online revolutionary application that allows medical practitioners an electronic method of keeping track and organizing their patients’ files. Practice Fusion is a San Francisco-based company that has developed a free electronic medical record (EMR). System available to physicians in a software-as-a-service (SaaS). The software, also called Practice Fusion, includes modules for patient management, e-prescribing, scheduling and billing. The company claims to have more than 30, 000 users in all 50 states.
Practice Fusion was founded in 2005 by Ryan Howard, previously IT billing integration consultant for 12, 000 physicians at Brown & Toland, and engineer Matthew Douglass. The first version of the product was launched in 2007 and initially gained little traction in the tough economy. The company began to grow in 2009 when the product and customer support were made free. Band of Angels and Felicis Ventures became the first major investors in the company in May 2009, followed by Salesforce. com in June and Morgenthaler Ventures in December 2010. The company closed a $23 million Series B round of financing led by Founders Fund in April 2011.
The product achieved ONC-ATCB Meaningful Use Certification in June 2011. It has been named the No. 1 EMR for customer satisfaction among primary care providers in both 2011 and 2012 in addition to being named No. 1 for e-prescribing client satisfaction and helping doctors achieve Meaningful Use by Brown-Wilson’s Black Book Rankings. Features: Practice Fusion is the fastest growing electronic health record community in the US. Founded in 2005, we now have over 150, 000 physicians and practice users using Practice Fusion’s EHR across all 50 states.
Practice Fusion is very organized and attainable, allowing doctors to compare statistics across their clinical community. Database nightmares of the past are eliminated and all at no cost to the physician. The creator of Practice Fusion uses advertising to generate income and to connect doctors with drugs and products they may be interested in. The website further explains how health plans and hospitals can collaborate and engage directly with patients through Practice Fusion to create Disease and Wellness Outreach Programs.
However, this part is not clearly explained and does not provide concrete examples on how this can be accomplished. Also, Practice Fusion’s homepage lacks a succinct definition of what the application is truly offering. Practice Fusion is driven by a mission to improve care by providing free, web-based electronic health records to physicians and their practices. In a healthcare sector facing increasing complexity, we believe in the urgent need for health technologies that reduce costs and save lives. Practice Fusion’s complete and fully certified electronic health record system is designed for small and mid-size physician practices.
We build our features so they are quick to learn and easy to use for your whole practice, from check-in and charting to sending a prescription, lab order or referral. Practice Fusion has made a name for itself over the past few years by tapping into enormous demand for digital health information — particularly health records. From its inception in 2005, the startup has been on a mission to disrupt the slow-moving, archaic world of Healthcare IT by providing a free, web-based electronic medical records (EMR) platform to doctors and their practices.
With the success of its EMR software, Practice Fusion is now looking to extend the functionality of its platform with the goal of building a true end-to-end health service. Setting its sights on becoming the Salesforce. com for doctors and the for health, last month the company launched Patient Fusion — a new complementary site that allows anyone and everyone to compare doctor reviews and book appointments within an hour of arriving at the doctor’s office. The new service takes Practice Fusion into ZocDoc’s territory, combining Yelp-like reviews with an Uber-style on-demand booking service.
However, unlike Yelp, which would allow users to rate doctors even if they’ve never stepped foot in their office, Patient Fusion aggregates ratings from patients after their visits. This allows the company to not only build a database of verified reviews (based on visits it knows actually took place), but to lay the groundwork for a sizable local physician search engine as well. With several million reviews now live, today Practice Fusion is taking the next step toward being a full-service health information platform with the launch of a free tool that aims to help patients keep better tabs on their health spending.
Now, along with the ability to book appointments and access digital health records, Patient Fusion allows users to track their health spending across their entire history of medical visits. The platform, which officially launches in beta today, is available to Practice Fusion patients who are covered by national health insurance providers like Anthem Blue Cross and United. If the initial launch of Patient Fusion brought the company into Yelp (and ZocDoc) territory, then its new free service marks the beginning of Practice Fusion’s own version of Mint. com for health.
Practice Fusion provides the key information needed to power clinical research for drug interaction studies, disease outbreak monitoring and other public health projects. Top universities across the country use Practice Fusion’s research information to power studies providing new insight into healthcare and how it is delivered. All research information utilized by Practice Fusion is de-identified and fully compliant with HIPAA. Practice Fusion has teamed up with Microsoft Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market to provide a sample of 15, 000 de-identified medical records for research purposes at no cost.
These records include details for researching trends in: – Patient vitals – including blood pressure, respiratory rate, BMI, temperature and more – Diagnoses – with ICD-9 codes, start and stop date – Medications – with NDC codes, medication names, strengths, schedule, start and stop date – Prescriptions – representing medication prescribing events – Immunizations – including vaccine name and date administered – Allergies – with type, date, reaction, related medication NDC code and severity
Practice Fusion’s platform provides increasingly complete and significant insight into national health. By aggregating patients’ health information and family health bills, Patient Fusion allows users to track and visualize the history of their health costs, including out-of-pocket expenses and deductibles, for example. The idea is to help users more accurately plan their flexible spending account (FSA) contributions and estimate the cost of future visits to the doctor’s office, for example.
Another key piece of the new service is that it includes insurance claims information to enable patients to view their claims history and determine which claims have been rejected, which have been accepted and which may need to be disputed. By allowing patients to more effectively stay on top of their health bills, the company also sees a potential upside for doctors — as easier expense management could lead to an increase in payments that are more accurate and are actually on time.
By simplifying health expense tracking and by allowing people to view out-of-pocket expenses incurred to date (as well as costs covered by insurance and the remaining balance of their deductible) — all for free — Patient Fusion comes with plenty of appeal. This is especially true for doctors and practices already using the company’s EMR platform, as they can now direct their patients to its appointment booking and expense tracking tool without worrying about the high costs of ZocDoc or other similar services. And, for its new tool, having access to the huge network of medical professionals using its EMR software, this means ready-made scale.
The new service will be of particular interest to startups like Simplee, which launched its own “ Mint. com for healthcare expenses” service and medical wallet back in 2011 to enable people to better track visits, monitor benefits and pay bills online. More recently, Simplee has expanded its reach by bringing a payment and loyalty platform to hospitals in an effort to give them a better way to distribute bills (digitally), and, last month, it launched a new mobile app that allows people to pay their family’s medical bills from their phone — on the go.
While Simplee has managed over $2 billion in medical bills to date, Patient Fusion’s new service puts the two companies in direct competition — at least in regard to this functionality. However, Practice Fusion’s version does not yet support bill payments, only expense management, nor does it yet have the mobile piece. Though Simplee’s platform is (arguably) more extensive at this point, it likely won’t be long before Practice Fusion fills the remaining gap.
What’s more, as the company further extends it health platform, potentially adding integrations with opular health-tracking devices (like, say, Fitbit), Practice Fusion will begin to compete with a whole new category of startups and companies. While it remains to be seen which tools the average patient will find more accessible (and usable), at this point, given the ridiculous cost of healthcare and medical expenses, the average American will welcome any help in this regard with open arms. Referrals are accessible directly from your charting workflow, so you can send a patient referral as you are finishing up your chart note.
Since referrals are sent directly within the EHR, you and your colleagues will receive each other’s medical referrals in real-time, as they are sent—giving you the speed and convenience of instant messaging while remaining HIPAA-compliant (unlike traditional e-referral). With our collaborative messaging feature, you can get instant confirmation from your colleagues on the status of your medical referrals. No need to keep your patients waiting on a reply—your colleagues can simply send you a quick referral response within the EHR to confirm your request.