spotlight on technology & technique
ChartLogic: An EMR System Designed by Doctors for Doctors
By Leslie Goldberg, Assistant Editor

ChartLogic, a practice management and EMR system, is designed to cater to the specific needs of individual physicians, their specialty, practice and charting style.  

Bruce Jorgenson, M.D., a pediatrician and ChartLogic, Inc. co-founder, created ChartLogic in 1994 because he was "frustrated with money spent on transcription and time wasted on patient chart management, and couldn't find a single system to resolve these issues and address the needs of the medical practice specialist."

Dr. Jorgenson wanted to create a truly paperless charting system that was simple to implement, adaptable to each physician's style of charting and cost effective. The ChartLogic system is the result of that desire and its focus remains on the electronic medical practice, says the company.

ChartLogic has a knowledge base built specifically for the ophthalmologist and caters to high-volume practices focused on enhancing patient care. The ophthalmology templates and SmartText feature enable routine documentation to be inserted and generated instantly using simple voice commands or a quick click of the mouse.

ChartLogic also incorporates its CL Imaging and drawing capabilities for easy annotation, including lenses, corneas, iris, maculas and anterior chambers.

Better care for patients is provided through Flowsheets (to monitor patient information such as IOP) and immediate referral reply letters.

Increased reimbursement is a significant priority for any ophthalmology practice and many practices suffer due to insufficient patient documentation; ChartLogic aims to increase revenue by ensuring that procedure and diagnosis coding is accurate, complete and compliant with government regulations.

"ChartLogic has a tremendous amount of adaptability in modifying exam forms in a custom manner, which I find very valuable," says Richard Pesavento, M.D., of Retina Consultants of Southern California. "I believe that one of the most difficult problems a practice faces when integrating an EMR into their practice is adapting to the EMR. The more freedom you have in adapting the EMR to your practice, the less you and your staff have to adapt to." He explains that it takes more work on the front end, but is much more rewarding later.

Improving Patient Care

"I am able to answer phone calls from patients and doctors much faster because all of the information is at my fingertips," says Dr. Pesavento. In addition, his practice essentially never has an instance when a chart can not be found which has crucial information.

"We get our referral letters out to referring physicians within 48 hours on average," continues Dr. Pesavento. "Also, because our templates force us to fill in certain information about exams, I find that I am looking more closely at some parts of the exam and documenting them more accurately than before."

ChartLogic 6.0 Standard Features

ChartLogic's system is feature-rich. Optional advanced features are designed to further meet the needs of individual practices. The system allows practices to retain control of security and patient information and is in full compliance with HIPAA standards.

ChartLogic says its standard features include:

►Precision Voice. State-of-the-art voice recognition technology ensures a high level of accuracy while dictating notes with built-in specialty vocabularies
►Precision Dictate. Automatically transcribes recorded dictation to text as part of your note so that doctors can speak freely in front of patients
►Diagnosis Director. Associates diagnosis with CPT codes, macros, patient education and prescriptions allowing assessment and plan to be finalized in one step
►DataCatch. Extracts basic patient demographic information from the practice's management system and imports it into ChartLogic
►Interface. User-friendly interface is easy to learn and simple to use, according to ChartLogic
►Templates and Flowsheets. Customize templates and flowsheets to look and flow like your current charting system. Provides access to a library of more than 1,000 specialty templates
►Specialty Specific Database. Tailored database for specialists with built-in specific features
►Note Customization. Customize your notes to match your billing.

Additional Standard Features

►ChartLogic Health Maintenance. Tracks patient preventative care information to help forecast, maintain and alert patient needs such as annual exams or vaccinations
►ChartLogic Report Generator. Enables the physician to produce basic reports capturing clinical data
►ChartLogic Prescription Writer. Automatic drug selection feature selects your preferred drug based on diagnosis for ease of prescription writing
►Word Processing. Advanced editing features allow tables from exams, addendums and confidential screens to be formatted. Multi-media objects can be embedded into text
►ChartLogic Referral Module. Instant reply letters for in- and outbound referrals that correspond directly with the appropriate physician and patient
►SmartText. By stating a command, voice macros will insert complete exams, patient customizable paragraphs or other data directly into the note — reducing dictation time
►ChartLogic Faxing Module. Automatically fax prescriptions directly to the pharmacy — exams, entire patient charts and summaries can be faxed to other physicians and insurance companies
►Multiple Chief Complaints. Quickly and easily document secondary non-ophthalmology related complaints
►Alerts. Automatic alerts for drug-specific allergies
►ChartLogic Scanning Module. Allows documents such as existing charts, labs, x-rays and consults to be scanned directly into ChartLogic — outside documentation can be scanned directly into a patient note for easy clinical reference
►Security. Security levels are customizable for individual users, built-in security features provide secure charts and private physician notes. Locking feature enables the entire system to become locked.
►Messaging. Automatic messaging system to alert the physician of important messages and pending patient phone calls
►Smart Mark. Navigate hands-free through the note with voice commands
►Illustrator. Enables drawing or diagramming of procedures in various colors (using stock sketches, digital camera images) and place illustration directly in a patient note
►Patient Tracker. Timed tracking of patients by room and/or action. Custom views, timers, and back-end efficiency reports are available.

CL Imaging

CL Imaging is a one-stop solution for storing, distributing and reviewing digital images. The company states that through the use of CL Imaging, physicians can access images instantly from anywhere.

CL Imaging enhances the quality of health care an office provides by improving image acquisition, increasing image availability and reducing film-processing time and costs, says ChartLogic.

CL Imaging is a browser-based Web service that enables a user to access images from any device. No special hardware, software or keys are required. By using the latest compression technology, CL Imaging can quickly access images from remote locations. By improving the availability of the image, you can diagnose remotely, educate your patients and send images to referring physicians.

To find out more about ChartLogic, visit their Web site at www.chartlogic.com or call (888) 337-4441.