The Tech Doctor: Best-of-Breed or Integrated Systems?
For first-time EMR buyers, it’s a key decision
By Bruce Kleaveland Most practices in the market for their first EMR already have computerized practice management systems. As they shop for an EMR, they will need to make an important decision: Should I keep my existing practice management system and interface it with my new EMR, or should I purchase an integrated system that combines a new EMR with new practice management software? Let’s look at the pros and cons of each option.
Say you have a perfectly adequate practice management system, and it’s working very well. Now you want to add an EMR — and the vendor for your practice management system doesn’t offer the new technology. What do you do?
You have two choices: interface your existing practice management system with your new EMR, or start fresh and buy a fully integrated practice management system and EMR for your practice. In industry parlance, the former approach is referred to as “best of breed” systems, and the latter are called integrated systems.
With the best-of-breed approach, you select each software application based on its inherent qualities. If the practice management and EMR systems you choose come from different vendors and need to exchange data, you build an interface that allows that to happen. When combining EMR and practice management systems from different vendors, registration interfaces are the most common. This allows your front desk to automatically send data for new patients entering your practice to your new EMR. Without a registration interface, your staff must separately enter patient data into your practice management and EMR systems.
Integrated systems share the same database. This means that when your front-desk staff enters patient data into your integrated system, the information becomes instantly available to everyone in the office, using the scheduling, billing, or EMR portion of the system. Continued...
