Epic offers a suite of medical practice management and EHR software.
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ESO EHR
Score 8.7 out of 10
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ESO Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a web-based patient care documentation and reference system for emergency medical responders and firefighters. It's designed to provide easy access to information about patients' medications, allergies, history, etc. from a tablet while in the field, and allow healthcare providers to document patient encounters quickly.
Epic is great to access from home or anywhere there is a wifi connection. It is very convenient for office or hospital employees. One time when it is not optimal is when I write a Certification of Terminal Illness for a hospice patient. I can never see it again. It drops off of Epic. I wish those notes would remain.
For most EMS providers, ESO EHR is an ideal solution: It meets 95% of the needs for the typical EMS provider, provides an unparalleled ease of use for field personnel documenting patient care, and is easy to implement and administer. Large EMS systems should carefully consider the limitations of the underdeveloped quality management modules for QA/QI programs. Large or progressive EMS systems with an advanced data analytics/data science capability should be aware of the significant challenges and limitations ESO EHR poses for data use outside of the standard analytics reports.
Interdisciplinary Communication: The care of patients improves when you are able to have the entire care team communicate with each other. Epic makes this process very easy by utilizing one chart for all physicians in the organizations. Care decisions and patient safety are greatly improved by seeing past decision making processes.
Patient Communication: With features like MyChart and Care Everywhere, Epic gives patients a great deal of control over their information. MyChart acts like a patient portal allowing them to see what their providers have to say, see lab results, make payments, and share information with their doctor all from a mobile device or computer. Having features like this allow the patient to take part in their care.
Improves Claim Efficiency: The way that Epic handles insurance claims is incredible. Claims are correct and double checked before they are sent to the insurance companies. This in turn, reduces the number of denials and improves the speed of payments.
The biggest gap is that doing QA/QI is not scalable or streamlined for a large provider. Managing an effective QA/QI program takes an incredible amount of labor and extra work.
The lack of customization and custom fields heavily limits use of ESO EHR to capture new data points for internal quality improvement or research projects.
You should invest time into taking a training class before using Epic, but once you get the hang of it the usability features are endless! My favorite part about Epic is how it is automated and "trained" to catch user errors that would typically be missed in normal documentation/charting. This ensures accuracy and eliminates errors.
A dedicated support staff for each module/area is provided by Epic. This is beneficial for points of contact, however, not all support staff are created equal, and there seems to be high turnover in these roles(staff seems to turn over every 1-2 years). This can make it challenging for continuity and quick support resolution as new staff are not as familiar with organization-specific needs, environments, and/or questions.
Epic gives extensive customization options in terms of utility and view. I have found this to be highly useful and efficient EHR as compared to other EHRs we use in our organization.
ESO EHR won out due to ease of use for providers and for administration. Other vendors had greater ability to do data analysis, quality management, and customization but ultimately were significantly more difficult to learn, use, and administer.
It must have had a positive impact as things get done quicker, leading to easier billing/coding. It must be saving a lot of money and time. I am not aware of a better product.
