Epic offers a suite of medical practice management and EHR software.
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WellSky Personal Care
Score 8.9 out of 10
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WellSky Personal Care (formerly ClearCare) is an online home healthcare business administration platform. It includes features for scheduling in-home care visits, messaging between patients and caregivers, and marketing caregiving services.
Epic is not priced or designed for the small provider offices. However, if current Epic customers are willing, they have the ability to bring those smaller groups onboard through Community Connect. This allowsthe smaller group to have the full benefit of Epic without the hardware and software costs associated with owning Epic.
ClearCare/WellSky is not a software I would go out of my way to endorse. The coding bugs are numerous and fixing those bugs is not at all a priority. Unfortunately, it is still the most robust platform of it's kind - reporting, customization, integrations, automation capabilities, mobile app for caregivers - and with it becoming part of WellSky I am hopeful they will now have the resources to allocate for bug squishing
There are doctors' notes templates with prepopulated fields in them. This saves a lot of time.
Epic sends medication orders to pharmacies electronically so that we do not have to call. This saves a lot of time.
Epic has a Secure Chat feature via which we can send HIPAA protected messages to any employee with the patient's name and record attached.
It has a PDMP link. We can look up what controlled medications such as opiates patients have been prescribed and by whom.
It links to MyChart, which is a platform via which patients can look up their own information without them having to call the doctors. This saves a lot of time.
Managing the scheduling process form the employee and client standpoint. In one screen we can see exactly what is going on with a client. Who's there, when they arrived, when they will be leaving, etc. Plus we can manage up to the minute changes in the care plan, in real time.
Payment processing allows us to bill and initiate client payments with a few clicks. It automatically reconciles accounts receivable. It handles both credit card and ACH payments. Saves a bunch of time.
Background checks are fast and easy because they are integrated into the platform. When a potential employee applies it starts the system begins all the steps in the hiring process. Once they get to orientation and have completed all of the other hiring process steps, with one click we initiate a customized background check that meets our licensing requirements.
Visual Updates: While Epic is constantly improving the user experience, there are a few features that still need a design refresh. While this does not effect functionality, it does have an impact on user perception.
Ordering: While placing an order for a physician is very easy, a few changes to the workflow could improve the experience for physicians.
ClearCare does experience times when the system glitches. You cannot add or edit shifts, see client or caregiver details, nothing. They don't have anything in place that reassures you that they are aware of the problem and are working to fix it. It doesn't usually happen more than a few times a year, but we rely so heavily on this software for the daily operation of our business that even 15 minutes down can prove to be catastrophic.
You can call tech support, but overall I have found them rather unhelpful. I don't usually stay on hold long enough to get a live person, preferring to send an email if it's not an urgent need. I have been disappointed with the time it takes to resolve issues; the longest I went without a fix was about 8 months. They are pretty slow to change when it's something that has been suggested by the network publically. Moreover, sometimes the changes they implement make things more difficult for us or require features or functionality that we would prefer not to use. For example, they are rolling out a new feature that will allow the caregivers to enter their own availability in the system. We require them to contact the office to change their availability or request time off and plan to do everything we can to keep it that way.
The mobile version of the administrative site is essentially the desktop version, but tiny. When we are out and about after hours, inevitably we use our cell phones to utilize the software. Any shift adjustments are tedious, as the pop-up box moves around whenever you edit a field. To be fair, I'm not sure that the time and energy it would take to redesign the mobile site would be worth it when we still get all the functionality of the full site, even if it is harder to maneuver.
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.
I have used ClearCare for about a year now and have only experienced positive outcomes with the system. It has everything you need from simple note reminders to detailed medial information regarding your client. If anyone in the health field takes the time to view this software, they would be hooked.
The initial training was good but would have been even better had I been more familiar with the system before taking it. I found learning how to deal with Epic while working in the field at the same time was a (pardon the pun) Epic learning curve. I really think there should be a scribe who does the data entry and others can focus on what they do best.
They are reasonably responsive with simple questions, but when it comes to the software not functioning as expected, resolution is very slow. I had a situation where I would click "cancel" in a scheduling window and it would go ahead and make the change (i.e. I didn't realize a caregiver wasn't actually available or that it would create over time, so I would cancel out of that window to go reevaluate, but when it closed that window, the change would be made regardless). That took 8 months for them to resolve, during which time they released a number of relatively useless updates. Currently, I am waiting for them to fix Safe Mode, which is supposed to give us basic access to personnel and scheduling. A select few clients/caregivers actually show up in this system, rendering it largely useless. I have been waiting since late August without an update or resolution, it is currently mid-February. For software that touts safe mode, I would think they would make sure it's actually functional for all users. They have to advertise it in the network because the software goes down with some frequency, at least every few months.
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.
This is a similar system that was created for organizational purposes for health businesses. Ortho2 is not as user friendly and takes much longer to learn the different ins and outs of the software system. I used it for over six years and still did not use all of the features in the system
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.
POSITIVE IMPACT: We can access almost any metric related to the business and build reports that allow us to set goals, identify potential issues, maintain oversight, and automate workflows with the report scheduling
NEGATIVE IMPACT: We've been dealing with the same software bugs for over 5 years now, they slow productivity, create room for user error, require workarounds to be created, you name it, just a lot of work to make the platform's shortcomings better since they refuse to do it for us
