“Dr. Perez-Cortes feels he’s now more relaxed and content knowing that most of his key needs in an EHR system have been met with the WRS Health EHR system, something that was previously a challenge when he was paying for more expensive EHR system.”

WANTED – A simple, user friendly and efficient EHR system

Dr. Carlos Perez-Cortes approached WRS with a number of challenges his practice was facing with the EHR systems they had tested or been using in the past. Some of the key issues they faced were that the EHR systems they used previously did not support their desire for simplicity, efficiency and user friendliness.

This was especially important to Dr. Perez-Cortes, a psychiatrist by profession, as he needed the time and flexibility to provide his patients with the best quality of care possible. After running through numerous EHR demos, Dr. Perez-Cortes contacted WRS Health. WRS listened to the doctor’s needs and his particular practice’s workflow to identify how they could meet his EHR requirements for a simple and efficient system. Added to the system’s user-friendly interface, Dr. Perez-Cortes soon adopted the WRS Health Health Psychiatry specific EHR/PM platform which supported his psychiatric practice.

WRS clinical team trained Dr. Cortes Perez’ staff on how to use the system and assisted with implementing the practice on the WRS EHR system. WRS Health continues to offer ongoing support to the practice and reaches out to gather feedback on the practice’s user experience, while addressing any challenges they may be experiencing to ensure a smooth transition.;

Dr. Carlos Perez-Cortes

Dr. Carlos Perez-Cortes’ medical practice is based in Humacao, Puerto Rico. An amiable individual who takes pleasure in music, church and community, Dr. Cortes is happy professionally and works on his travel business during his spare time.

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Cortes spends a significant amount of time with each patient to correctly address their unique medical needs. Helping him run his practice are a number of support staff that do the scheduling and billing among a host of other administrative tasks at the practice.

Given the practice management workflows his office utilizes, Dr. Cortes has been looking for a way to reduce the amount of time he and his staff spend on administrative tasks throughout the day. 

Dr. Cortes’s primary focus is to spend the bulk of his time caring for his patients – not filling papers and doing administrative work. It’s obvious from this statement that Dr. Cortes values his time with his patients more than anything else at the practice, something the new EHR system he picked would have to support.

Challenges

Simplicity and User-friendliness

At the top of the list of challenges Dr. Perez-Cortes and his team were facing while evaluating other EHR systems was that they were too complex to use; which posed a huge challenge especially in on-boarding his team and getting them to use the system effectively. Besides that, it also took more of the doctor’s time rather than saving him time, another thing that lead to their eliminating these other platforms.

Upon adoption of WRS Health, Dr. Perez-Cortes found the system to have the level of simplicity and ease of use that he and his staff required from an EHR system. The WRS EHR system has a number of features that make it very simple for first time users. These features include pre-configured templates specific to psychiatry, something Dr. Perez-Cortes says made charting easier and faster, progress notes that are easy to follow, a user friendly interface developed from data points collected by new and long-time users, and a cloud-based infrastructure that means the practice doesn’t have to install any servers on site or hire IT personnel.

Expanded patient communications

Another requirement the medical practice had was the need to have an EHR system that could expand their patient communications well beyond the practice’s walls. This was especially important as most of the patients required personalized ongoing support and communication to keep them engaged with the practice and their treatment.

WRS EHR supports extended patient communications allowing patients to register online, schedule appointments, update health records and communicate with practice staff all from the comfort of their home or office. In addition, WRS Health also offers a variety of phone, email and SMS text messaging solutions that can be customized for every patient communication need. These features offered Dr. Perez-Cortes the benefits his practice needed in communicating with his patients more effectively.

Scheduling

Dr. Cortes and his staff had been facing a huge challenge when it came to scheduling appointments as his staff was overwhelmed with paperwork trying to keep everything in order and still provide top-notch medical service to his patients. The EHR system they would ultimately adopt needed to have an integrated and streamlined scheduling module to reduce the amount of staff time they were currently wasting.

WRS did just this. The WRS Health EHR system offers an integrated scheduling module that has functions that include: customizable schedule templates and appointment types, user-defined schedule views – by provider, multi-provider, location and appointment type, automated phone & email appointment reminders and confirmations and customizable welcome email for new patients.

Through this module, WRS Health was able to provide Dr. Perez-Cortes with the integrated scheduling features and benefits that reduced the time they were using on scheduling significantly.

Automated patient reminders

Another challenge Dr. Cortes and his staff were facing was inconsistencies with the practice’s appointment bookings, which would often lead to either quiet times or jams at the front desk. This challenge made it difficult for the practice to streamline its patient intake and optimize its operations to cater for quiet times and jams equally.

WRS Health has a comprehensive automated reminder module, which was able to solve this issue for Dr. Cortes and his team. This module includes, automated appointment reminders, automated appointment recalls, and health maintenance alerts, which empowers the practice to send out alerts to patients in a timely and organized manner. This translated into a more consistent and predictable patient workflow, as well as more relaxed patients who arrived and were catered to in a timely and efficient manner.

Integrated patient portal

One final challenge that faced Dr. Perez-Cortes was efficiently getting patients to fill out forms and filing them quickly. This was a tremendous pain point for the practice. Before adopting WRS Health EHR system, Dr. Perez-Cortes would leave the office at or past 6 PM due to excessive paperwork. WRS Health system corrected this.

The platform helps reduce paperwork through the use of an integrated patient portal, enabling patients to pre-fill all their details and symptoms before they arrive for their appointment. This drastically reduces the amount of documentation Dr. Perez-Cortes has to do once the patient arrives. In addition, updating additional patient data became faster and simpler through the use of the patient portal. This translated into saving Dr. Cortes up to one and a half hours each day, allowing him to leave the office on time each day without having to extend his work hours.

Key Solution Outcomes

Through the adoption of WRS Health, some of the key benefits Dr. Cortes and his team experienced included:

100% user acceptance from the doctor and his team due to the simplified interface and features of the platform. This was also augmented by the training and ongoing user support WRS offers to the practice.

Dr. Perez-Cortes and his team shaved off 1.5 hours from their daily workload which has allowed the doctor to leave work on time and accept 8-10 additional patients each month.

The system has helped the practice reduce the amount of time patients spend in the waiting room filling out forms. This has translated in higher patient satisfaction and retention rates.

WRS Health’s cloud infrastructure has saved the practice the additional costs of installing servers and hiring IT personnel as the system is entirely web-based. This has also made it easy for the team and their patients to access the portal from anywhere, boosting service availability and opening avenues for new levels of interaction between the practice and their customers.

Dr. Perez-Cortes feels he’s now more relaxed and content knowing that most of his key needs in an EHR system have been met with the WRS Health EHR system, something that was previously a challenge when he was paying for more expensive EHR systems that delivered less than they promised; bringing him back to his primary focus excellent and focused patient care.

 

Psychiatry Testimonial

WRS Health thanks Dr. Carlos Perez-Cortes for sharing his review of the WRS Psychiatry EMR.