To deliver the seamless patient and staff experience that Dr. Tim Davis envisioned for his state-of-the-art orthopedic health and surgery center, he built his own software solution and launched it as a standalone company – BluByrd. He also needed an EHR that could grow with him and that had open, well-published APIs. Only one vendor delivered.
Timothy T. Davis, MD (Dr. Davis) is the founder of Source Healthcare, an orthopedic/regenerative health and surgery center serving Santa Monica and Los Angeles. His centers offer holistic care and relief for those suffering from arm, leg, neck, back, and chronic pain.
Dr. Davis is also the founder of BluByrd, a software company that automates surgical case data and provides a better way to schedule surgical cases. The company grew out of a gap that Dr. Davis saw in his own practice. With BluByrd, the company is aiming to solve similar challenges for other surgical centers.
Healthcare IT Today sat down with Dr. Davis for an in-depth interview. We wanted to know which EHR vendor he chose to partner with, the criteria he used to make his decisions, what problem BluByrd was created to solve, and what challenges lie ahead for practice owners.
Key Takeaways
- Communication and coordination are not enough to overcome patient scheduling challenges. Staff need technology as well to make the process truly seamless, especially when it comes to sharing patient information.
- Choose a digital solution that can grow with you. Over time your needs will change, so choosing digital systems and vendors that can adapt to your needs will save you stress and money over time.
- Open and well-documented APIs are a must-have. Dr Tim Davis has been successful because his chosen EHR platform, Dr. Chrono, has open and well-documented APIs which has allowed the team at BluByrd to build a solution that is designed specifically for the needs of pain and surgical centers.
Communication and Coordination are Not Enough
When Dr. Davis founded Source Healthcare, he believed that having his clinic and surgical center in one building would make scheduling patients for procedures more seamless. He was wrong.
“When I built Source Healthcare and Source Surgery Center under one roof, I thought that proximity of those two entities would going to assist with communication. It didn’t,” recalled Dr. Davis. “Even though it was one organization, it was like having opposing teams. They would point the finger back at each other. “
After investigating the issue, Dr. Davis realized that the core problem was a communication breakdown between databases: “It had nothing to do with the people.”
To address this problem. Dr. Davis needed to find an EHR platform that could meet the practice’s needs.
Finding an EHR Partner
Dr. Davis began his search for an EHR solution before the start of the Meaningful Use incentives in 2009.
“I tried about five different EHRs starting back in 2007,” said Dr. Davis. “Back then, most of those systems were built for compliance and not built for ease-of-use.”
After trying multiple systems, Dr. Davis settled on DrChrono (now part of EverHealth) as his EHR.
“What really attracted me to DrChrono was the ease of use and the customizability of it,” continued Dr. Davis. “The folks at DrChrono and EverHealth have been amazing to work with. We have been able to work with their developers and others on new ideas.”
Dr. Davis and his team appreciated the ability to create templates inside of DrChrono so that work processes could be more streamlined. They leaned in and invested thousands of hours to customize the system to meet the unique needs of a surgery center.
“It was worth the time, energy and effort,” said Dr. Davis.
The refinements to their DrChrono system have allowed the team at Source Healthcare to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on improving patient experience.
Improved Patient Experience Through Interoperability
Over the years, Dr. Davis has come to realize that when patient data is made more portable and sharable, patient experience improves.
For example, when a clinic or healthcare facility refers a patient to a surgery center for a procedure, the patient’s health information needs to be transferred. Often this happens via PDFs or faxes, which means that what once was discrete data in an EHR is turned into unstructured information which must be keyed into the surgery center’s system. This process is not only inefficient, but it can also lead to errors that cause unnecessary delays in patient care.
A patient’s insurance ID is a long alphanumeric string and as such, has one of the highest rates of entry errors according to a study conducted by Dr. Davis. When this ID is incorrectly entered into the surgical center’s system (say when a zero is mistyped as the letter O) and that information is transmitted to the payer for pre-authorization, it will be rejected with a message that does not make it obvious that a transcription mistake occurred.
Countless hours (and potentially days) are wasted trying to resolve the problem which may include contact the patient to verify information. These unexpected administrative hiccups erode patient confidence and if these types of errors are not resolved quickly, patients can become anxious about their upcoming procedure – the exact opposite of the ideal patient experience.
To solve this problem, Dr. Davis and his team coded their own solution.
Creating a Data Sharing and Scheduling Solution: BluByrd
“I started looking for something off-the-shelf that would connect two clinical databases together,” explained Dr. Davis. “There were a lot of companies that said they could do it or who could build it, but they were all very expensive to maintain. After investigating for six months, I just decided to do it myself.”
They called their solution BluByrd.
BluByrd automates the sharing of surgical case data which reduces errors and enhances both the patient and staff experience. It facilitates the exchange of data between clinical practices and medical facilities. It also makes scheduling much easier for staff.
The benefits of BluByrd have been significant at Source Healthcare:
- Increased overall case volume
- Decreased cancellations
- Improved revenue
- Better use of clinic resources
- Less time spent fixing data exchange errors
- Improved patient safety
“The improvement to patient safety is the most important,” stated Dr. Davis. “Thers is no opportunity for errors in the data transfer from point A to B. You don’t want a mistake and schedule someone who does not have a pre-op clearance or who has uncontrolled diabetes that somehow didn’t get transferred over.”
Now that everything is electronic and direct system to system, everything is seamless.
Once the information is received and processed by BluByrd, it is placed it directly into DrChrono. This is achieved without human intervention via APIs made available by DrChrono. These APIs are one of the many reasons Dr. Davis is pleased with his choice of EHR.
“That is one of the unique things about DrChrono,” stated Dr. Davis. “There are few other systems out there that have open APIs. Many say they do, but when you see the lack of documentation or when they say you have to work with their developers, you know they are not putting much more than lip service to it.”
DrChrono has been supportive of BluByrd. Their development team has worked together with BluByrd to continue to refine the integration. In addition, BluByrd is available in the DrChrono marketplace.
Closing Thoughts
It is encouraging to see a physician like Dr. Davis taking such an interest in the systems that his practice runs on. He has a passion for running a practice, caring for patients, and technology. Throughout his journey, Dr. Davis has not settled for what vendors had available off-the-shelf.
He chose to adopt DrChrono’s EHR because it offered flexibility and the ability to grow with him. He launched a software company to overcome a barrier that was preventing his team from offering patients a more seamless experience. Now he is helping other surgical centers by sharing his knowledge and the solutions he has created.
Learn more about Source Healthcare at https://www.sourcehealthcare.com/
Learn more about BluByrd at https://www.blubyrd.com/
Learn more about DrChrono at https://www.drchrono.com/
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