Podiatry Summary of WRS Health EHR

Bare Foot Care Specialist had been using the now-defunct MediNotes EHR platform when WRS reached out to Dr. Velazquez to consider trying WRS Health EHR platform. The objective was to demonstrate the superiority of WRS Health over the current system she was using, in how it would help overcome a number of challenges she was encountering. Through a hands-on demo, which highlighted some key features that tackled her challenges, WRS was able to win over Dr. Velazquez to switch to a new EHR for her podiatry practice. 

Client Background

Dr. J. Velazquez is a native of Puerto Rico who is passionate about her work. As a podiatrist with a small practice in Flowery, GA, she has employed two staff members to help her run her practice. One is a front desk assistant and the other is a billings assistant. She had an additional member of staff recently, who was her medical assistant, but had to let her go as part of a reorganization. 

Dr. Velazquez did her first three years of medical training in Bronx, New York. Her last year of training/ surgical residency was at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Island. She then went on to work under another doctor before she decided to start her own practice. She currently runs her practice on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the day, on which days she sees on average 12 patients a day or 36 patients a week. Her Tuesdays are designated paperwork days, while she volunteers at a non-insurance clinic on every other Thursday. Her practice remains closed over the weekend.

The Challenges and Solutions Offered for a Podiatry Practice

Before Dr. Velazquez heard about WRS Health, she had been using the now discontinued MediNotes health IT platform. That was the system she used and had a role in developing the templates for while employed by another Podiatrist. The system was time consuming and very expensive to buy and to keep up with the upgrades; adding to the cost was the need of a local server (and maintenance) to store all the data.

WRS provides a web based system with constant upgrades and improvements for an affordable monthly premium, allowing Dr. Velazquez to concentrate more on patient care and less on the technical and financial aspects of the EHR. Plus, the support team is awesome and any issues are taken care of rather quickly. In addition, WRS has self guided training which makes it simple to learn and navigate easily through the process of initiation and use of the system.

Easy Subscription Model

Many of the platforms Dr. Velazquez tried in the past, simply did not have a simple and straightforward subscription model that worked for her. As a small practice, the huge fees she paid as setup costs and maintenance fees were detestable. As a result, she was on the lookout for a system that met all her requirements but that would not break her bank or require a high level of involvement in managing billings.

WRS Health IT platform offered exactly that, being a cloud based system that is offered as an entirely subscription based service. With no installations required or heavy infrastructure costs, WRS is able to offer its EHR system at a very competitive rate, something that played a huge part in winning over Dr. Velazquez. In addition, once signed up, the automatic billing made it easy for the doctor to organize her payments in such a way that she does not have to keep revisiting them every single month. This saved her practice time and money during the deployment and subsequent use of the system. 

Cloud-based System

Dr. Velazquez also found that with other EHR systems, dealing with updates, service availability, local infrastructure and other such issues was a huge drain on her practice. Not only was it time and money consuming but was also a constant headache to keep track of all these things, while still trying to run her practice. 

She found the WRS Health EHR system solved this completely. A cloud-based EHR, all updates to the system are handled remotely and without the involvement of the users. Users find the system updated whenever they open it to use it. In addition, the EHR is hosted on WRS Health’s servers, saving clients the need to buy, install and maintain their own server infrastructure. This also means all client data is saved under the highest data security standards available and is always available to the customer whenever and wherever they need it. 

Simplicity (Reducing the pain of the business side of medicine)

Dr. Velazquez appreciates the simple things in life; nature, gardening, family, and she wishes this simplicity could translate to her medical practice. As with many other doctors, she detests the business side of medicine. In her words, “I think the healthcare/medical field is a “nightmare” and I sometimes wonder if it is worth all the trouble”. Spending time with her patients reminds her that it is. Having an EHR system that supported her love for simplicity was therefore a very important factor to her when choosing an EHR system. 

WRS Health has built its EHR system with simplicity in mind. Appreciating that most doctors need a lessened work load not more complex features, WRS Health’s IT system is built to have only as many features as are necessary to the practice and doctor. Also carried out are annual system audits to determine what features have grown redundant and what new ones can be added to make the system more powerful but still maintaining its simplicity.

This simplicity was a huge score in Dr. Velazquez’s eyes, as she intimated, “WRS’s system is as simple as they come. Before, I used to have to try and figure out what the system was all about even before I could use it to save me time and effort. However, with WRS, using the system is a no-brainer. Everything is organized in a simple manner and works exactly as you hope it would.” 

CustomTemplates 

Before WRS, the doctor found it hard to customize her own templates, save them and reuse them later. The opposite was true with WRS Health. She found that with WRS Health, she could easily create her own podiatry custom templates, save them to the system and use them later. 

WRS Health EHR system has built-in support for custom template development by users. Housed in a centralized template gallery, this gallery is accessible to the entire pool of WRS users. This crowd-sourced template development means there are dozens of templates available for every single medical specialty represented by WRS users. For instance, the templates developed by Dr. Velazquez have been adopted by other podiatrists in the WRS user network, making the system more appropriate for their practices through the efforts of their fellow users. 

Outcomes and Impact 

Before Dr. Velazquez started using WRS Health EHR system, she struggled with using complex systems that were hard to use, hard to set up and cost her more than her small practice could comfortable afford. This made it difficult for the doctor to focus on what was good and wholesome about practicing medicine, which from time to time sowed doubts in her mind on her future in the profession. 

After adopting WRS Health EHR system, she was able to see significant cost savings due to the simplified and affordable subscription fee, as well as time and effort savings from the simplicity of the system. These gave her breathing space to reaffirm her belief and dedication to practicing medicine. In addition, Dr. Velazquez was able to contribute to the template gallery, something that has given her a great sense of pride as having played a part in making WRS Health system better and more useful for doctors across the US and across the world.