News

CONWAY, NH – Eliada Homes of Asheville, NC has selected The Echo Group’s Clinician’s Desktop™/Revenue Manager™ software to fulfill their electronic health record, e-Prescribing and billing needs.

Founded in 1903, Eliada Homes, Inc. is a non-profit agency serving the children and families of Western North Carolina.  Eliada’s services include Residential and Day Treatment for high risk children and adolescents; Child Development Center services, including Day Care, Summer Camp and School Age care; Foster Care and Therapeutic Foster Care; Therapeutic Recreation and Community Support services.

Paul Kirsch, Director of Marketing for the Echo Group commented “Echo has built a strong presence in North Carolina and we are excited to add another customer in the State.  Eliada Homes is a leader in treating children and families and we look forward to bringing them tools like the Visual Health Record to assist in their mission.”

About The Echo Group
Since 1980, The Echo Group has been developing enterprise software applications that have been used nationwide to address the needs of Behavioral Health organizations. Echo offers a suite of Windows-based and Web-based applications for Administrative, Clinical EHR and Billing functions. They also offer a suite of services, including Transaction Management Billing Services and Fiscal and Clinical Process Workflow Analysis. The company is headquartered in Conway, New Hampshire, and also has offices in Lewiston, Maine, Powell, Ohio and Oakland, California.

In February of 2011, Clinician’s Desktop™ was fully certified as an Ambulatory EHR, enabling organizations to utilize Echo software when applying for Meaningful Use funds for Eligible Providers.

Scott Taylor, Senior Business Analyst, and Paul Kirsch, Director of Marketing, of The Echo Group will be presenting a session on Health Information Exchange at the PCPA Technology Conference on March 16th in Harrisburg, PA.

An abstract from the presentation is below:

Leaders of behavioral health organizations are concerned about positioning their organization to maintain service levels and vitality of the organization. Working in partnership with other providers in behavioral health and primary care is viewed as a key strategy to a secure future, but many see information systems interoperability as a hurdle. There is no single standard for system health information exchange (HIE), but there are opportunities to work together if one knows how to engage partners in the discussion. This non-technical session will provide information designed to arm leadership with information to engage partners in a discussion about data exchange from disparate information systems. Topics covered will include creating literacy of the technical options like CCD, XML, and HL7. Challenges in dealing with HIE such as privacy with also be discussed.

Scott and Paul will also be showing aspects of Clinician’s Desktop version 8.13, which recently achieved the status of Complete Ambulatory Certification, helping our customers utilize the product for Meaningful Use funds.  As part of the Certification process, Echo demonstrated the product’s integration of Continuity of Care Documents (CCD) and Continuity of Care Records (CCR) as well as HL7 Interface capabilities.

If you look at the ONC website or at the Drummond Website, you will notice that Echo has received Complete Ambulatory Certification. You may also notice some other organizations received Complete Inpatient Certification and then some others received Modular Ambulatory or Modular Inpatient Certification. So what is the difference?

Ambulatory Certification: Certification required by Eligible Providers to receive MU Funds

Inpatient Certification: Certification required by Hospitals to receive MU Funds

Modular Certification: A Vendor can elect to receive modular certification so they are only certified in a few of the certification criteria. For an ePrescribing Vendor, this makes complete sense as they are addressing a partial solution that would typically be bundled with another solution. For a complete EHR Vendor like Echo, we wanted to ensure to our customers that they could come to us for a single solution for their Certified EHR. We achieved this by passing all 34 of the criteria using Clinician’s Desktop and DrFirst for ePrescribing.

If Echo had elected to only go for modular certification that would mean that the burden would be on you, the eligible provider, to find a certified solution that met the other criteria that Echo did not meet. That’s true even if you never plan to use that functionality. That made no sense to us, which is why we elected for the complete certification.

Why did Echo choose to go for complete ambulatory certification and not inpatient?

As mentioned above, Eligible Providers only qualify as Eligible Providers under the ambulatory model. Right now, because of the wording of the law, “Hospitals” in the behavioral health arena cannot qualify for MU funds, only EPs can qualify. With that in mind, we elected to focus on the certification that helps our customers. If the laws change so that behavioral health “Hospitals” suddenly qualify for MU funds, Echo will then pursue the additional handful of criteria required for us to achieve complete Inpatient Certification. Until then, we didn’t think that was the best use of your software maintenance dollars.

What about the legislation to include CMHCs, Inpatient Facilities etc. in the definition of “Hospitals” ?

Unfortunately that legislation never passed in the 111th Congress. There is hope that the legislation will be reintroduced in the 112th Congress but the general feeling is, the billions of dollars of extra funding it would require means it is not likely to pass in the current budget tightening environment.  Echo does keep on top of this legislation through our membership in National Council for Community Behavioral Health, SATVA and many other organizations so that if we see a chance of a sea change that would cause the legislation to be viable, we will be sure and share that information with you and also apply for complete Inpatient Certification.

February 10 – The Echo Group’s Clinician’s Desktop™ electronic health record software has received the federal government’s “meaningful use” stamp of approval earning Complete EHR Ambulatory Certification. This designation officially deems Echo’s Clinician’s Desktop (EHR) software capable of enabling providers to qualify for Meaningful Use funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Last week Clinician’s Desktop™ was tested and certified under the Drummond Group’s Electronic Health Records Office of the National Coordinator Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB) program.  Echo demonstrated the ability to perform all 34 of the required certification tests.  Echo was able to pass all of the tests in one day, without any need for re-testing or follow up testing dates.  Clinician’s Desktop™ is now 2011/2012 compliant in accordance with the criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

“It was imperative for us to achieve complete certification early in the year, providing customers as much time as possible to execute internal strategies for pursuing ARRA dollars.  There have been a lot of questions and misinformation about partial certification, complete certification, and the implications for behavioral health organizations.  It’s clear that a completely certified EHR solution is the only path to Meaningful Use ARRA funding and the only option for Echo to bring real value to our customers.” remarked Didi Owen, Director of Clinical Engineering for The Echo Group.

“As we worked to tune our product line to address certification requirements, our focus was also on maximizing ease of use.  We believe that true Meaningful Use of an EHR will not be achieved unless the product is intuitive.  This philosophy is at the core of Echo’s product design approach”, continued Owen.

Paul Kirsch, Director of Marketing at The Echo Group, offered “Our team completed the test in record time, demonstrating all requirements in 7 hours.  Echo’s easy to use products were important in this outcome, but it’s also a testament to our experience, expertise and insight into the needs of our customers and meaningful use.”

Behavioral health and social service organizations that meet the criteria for Meaningful Use of a certified EHR can receive up to $63,750 per eligible provider, which can significantly reduce the cost of ownership.

About The Echo Group
Since 1980, The Echo Group has been developing enterprise software applications that have been used nationwide to address the needs of Behavioral Health organizations. Echo offers a suite of Windows-based and Web-based applications for Administrative, Clinical EHR and Billing functions. They also offer a suite of services, including Transaction Management Billing Services and Fiscal and Clinical Process Workflow Analysis. The company is headquartered in Conway, New Hampshire, and also has offices in Lewiston, Maine, Powell, Ohio and Oakland, California.

For more information contact Paul Kirsch, Director of Marketing at paul.kirsch@echoman.com or visit www.echoman.com.

Learn more about how to navigate the Meaningful Use process by attending one of our MU Web Seminars.

About Drummond Group

Drummond Group Inc., the trusted software test lab, provides effective and efficient electronic health record (EHR) testing to healthcare information technology vendors and hospitals. As an Office of the National Coordinator Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB), Drummond Group works closely with healthcare software vendors and hospitals to certify EHRs that are looking to qualify for incentive funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  Drummond Group is approved to certify both complete and modular EHR for both ambulatory and inpatient.  Leveraging more than a decade’s worth of interoperability, conformance testing and certification experience in multiple industries, Drummond Group delivers what’s needed in healthcare: highly reliable and readily affordable software testing services. For more information, go to www.drummondgroup.com.

There is a lot of talk about Meaningful Use and ARRA incentives, who qualifies for funds and how to demonstrate meaningful use of an Electronic Health Record.

The Echo Group’s Clinician’s Desktop™ electronic health record software has received the federal government’s “meaningful use” stamp of approval earning Complete EHR Ambulatory Certification. This designation officially deems Echo’s Clinician’s Desktop (EHR) software capable of enabling providers to qualify for Meaningful Use funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is part of the economic stimulus package (ARRA) passed by the US Congress and signed into law on February 17, 2009.  One of the HITECH Act’s primary goals is to encourage the adoption and use of Electronic Health Records.

Learn more about how to navigate the Meaningful Use process by attending one of our MU Web Seminars.

Title IV of the act did establish incentive payments to those “eligible providers” who adopt and use a certified EHR.   The act recognizes psychiatrists and advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) as “eligible providers” that can receive either Medicaid or Medicare incentive payments. The act also outlines that Medicaid payments will eventually be reduced to those who do not use a certified EHR.  Each eligible provider can receive up to $63,750 of incentives over a period of 5 years.

The concept of “meaningful use” was introduced as part of the HITECH legislation and is tied to incentive payments.  Criteria have been established to demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records and obtain related funding.

Echo believes  meaningful use criteria are important requirements to understand and track. Download our Whitepaper today to learn more about how Echo software can help you achieve Meaningful Use with our Complete Ambulatory Certified Electronic Health Record software.

CERTIFICATION – WE GUARANTEE IT

Some of the criteria currently proposed for Meaningful Use references the requirement of using a Certified Electronic Health Record (EHR).  Echo’s Clinician’s Desktop™ product  is a Complete Ambulatory Certified EHR.  While we realize certification requirements will evolve in the future as well, Echo is committed to our customers to meet their needs, as we have been for the last three decades of regulations, such as ANSI Standard HIPAA Transactions.  To further reinforce our commitment to certification, Echo will contractually guarantee that our software will meet all certification requirements necessary to maximize Agency reimbursement.  This includes meeting necessary EHR Certification criteria as well as Meaningful Use criteria.

Contact Echo today to learn more about our Electronic Health Records and the Certification Process.