Urology Case Study

"Praxis really makes it easier to see patients. It allows you to work more effectively and, actually, make better decisions."

Tell us about your practice (specialty, # of users, etc)

I'm a urologist. I work in a private practice - me, another urologist, a nurse practitioner and a physician's assistant. I've been using Praxis about 8 years now.

Can you walk through a typical case with Praxis?

We have an appointment/billing software, so when the patients call to make an appointment, we input the info there, and we have an interface that brings the patient information into the Praxis chart.

When patients come into the office they fill out all the initial paperwork and that gets automatically scanned into the Praxis chart. Then the patients come in and get seen by the medical assistant, where the pre-visit notes, allergies, medications, and vital signs all get done. So when I walk in a lot of the preparation is already taken care of.

I usually talk to the patient and I examine them, and I put in whatever kind of note I want. It takes me about 15 seconds to chart when the new patient visits, which is very quick. Praxis then brings up the studies I always order and the medications I always use for that particular problem.

There's a lot of consistency in the office. My PA and my nurse practitioner know exactly what they have to do. We have very strict protocols for care in the office that Praxis allows us to follow. Then we e-prescribe all the medications to the pharmacies and all the requests print out in the back. When all the results get done, the labs come in to the charts and all the X-ray reports get scanned into the system automatically with the Agents. Then we give patients super-bills so the billing gets done, and follow up appointments for whatever the patient needs. We do a lot of procedures in the office like endoscopies and biopsies, so we have all the notes already loaded. It makes things very easy.

What made you choose Praxis? How did it compare to your previous record system?

One of my old partners was one of the original Praxis users from the beginning, and he’s the one that introduced me to Praxis. Before that, I was using paper. Praxis is much better.

I used to have a lot of fatigue taking notes and writing all day long, and my documentation was not very good. It limited my ability to see patients. The office was crazy because when people would call or a patient would come in, it would all be on paper charts and sometimes we couldn’t find them. Praxis makes the process much better because we have charts immediately available. Sorting out the charts is much easier, and filing isn’t an issue like with paper.

When you see the patient it’s much easier because you can instantaneously look everything up. It really makes your effort to see patients much less, and it allows you to work more effectively and, actually, make better decisions because you have more information available. Now, we can graph labs to see how things are changing over time. All the medications are always there. It really has made it much, much easier.

What do you like most about Praxis?

I like the fact that I don’t have to go from window to window, like with all of my friends’ EMRs – it’s very rigid and time consuming to go from one screen to another. With Praxis you can see everything on one screen. If I want to customize something I can do it on the fly – I don’t have to ask a developer to write, in my particular template program, another line of something I want. I do it immediately, on the spot, so I can really improve and customize the software to what I want and I don’t have to wait for anybody to do it for me.

Has Praxis been a successful financial and time investment for you?

Yes – just with the amount of money you save between charting. And paper charts are expensive; you have to buy stickers, paper supplies, ink, copiers, and the employee time spent to look for charts. The savings of going electronic is a no-brainer, basically. And we were able to attest for 2 years for the EMR Meaningful Use, so we’ve benefited from that.

It saves so much time, because we are a very busy office. We see a large amount of patients and there’s no way we could do it with any other system.

How has Praxis changed the way your office functions?

Everything’s quick – charting’s not an issue. We have experience with other systems from when we go to the hospital, and it’s a disaster. I mean, I almost don’t want to go to hospitals because I have to chart with dinosaurs compared to the way Praxis works.

What would you tell other urologists about Praxis?

I think that it’s a great piece of software, it allows you to run your office much more smoothly, and you’ll do much better than the other systems. It does take time to learn the system and to set it up the way you want it, but it’s a little bit of time investment up front to generate a great system that you’ll have for the future.

How have your experiences been with customer support?

Customer support is great. They have the chat system and they work hard to resolve issues that come up very quickly. In these last few versions, the software has improved significantly. The software moves even faster than it used to and they’ve really improved it. It’s gotten to the point where I rarely have to call anymore.