Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists Improve Patient Care Through Integration and Automation

Adapting to MACRA Regulatory Demands

Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists (VCS) has been executing their mission to improve the heart health of central Virginia since 1977 and is the largest cardiovascular practice in central Virginia now with 8 practices, a brand new ambulatory surgical center (ASC), and 38 physicians. Before partnering with NextGen, they were still managing documentation very similarly to when they opened decades earlier, on paper.

When the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) came out, it essentially mandated implementation of electronic medical records. VCS knew they had to make a decision, and while they had Athena for practice management, they were determined to evaluate multiple systems to find the system that best supported their needs as a cardiology practice.

“We spent about nine months evaluating multiple systems. Athena’s EHR was in the early stages of development and other vendors just did not have the cardiology tools we were looking for. So, after an extensive search, including a Saturday physician retreat, we chose NextGen as the best fit for Virginia Cardiovascular,” stated Patrick Toomey, Assistant Administrator at Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists.

They went live with NextGen® Enterprise EHR and then 6 months later followed suit with NextGen® Enterprise Practice Management (PM). Interoperability and automation were their main reasons for this decision. “We really try to take advantage of a unified EHR and PM database to automate as many processes as possible. For example, when a physician signs a visit note or an imaging study, the charge is sent to PM, a summary is saved to the procedure template, the final report is generated, and a copy is sent to the referring physician. Each of these processes had been manual in the past, allowing VCS to reduce the total number of systems and redeploy staff to more patient-facing tasks,” says Toomey.

A boon of automation keeps away staffing concerns

Between recruiting qualified employees or maintaining the satisfaction and proficiency of already existing ones, staffing remains a key concern for many practices. Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists found a needed solution in the form of automation. The automation of common, monotonous tasks like e-faxing and billing freed up much-needed time from staff, alleviating pressure and allowing them to make the most of their existing staff.

“You have to have the automation, or you would just be buried. Especially with staffing. We had two people who were doing nothing but manually faxing,” says Toomey.

With staff less overwhelmed by these important but repetitive tasks, they were better able to keep up with the rest of their roles and dedicate more time to patients as well.

The freedom and functionality of interoperability

As a former client of TSI Healthcare, now NextGen Healthcare, VCS was using multiple services through TSI all of which were able to function with the NextGen® Enterprise framework. NextGen Enterprise EHR and PM solutions act as an integral part of their operations. “It’s part of our infrastructure and it’s getting us the ability to collect information and maintain reliable revenue streams through the practice management system,” says Toomey.

With the incorporation of cardiology-specific content and templates from TSI, Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists are able to upgrade to the newest version of NextGen Enterprise EHR and all the benefits that come with it.

“Because NextGen’s now making those improvements, we’re able to move over to the newest NextGen out-of-the-box template and that’s only going to make it easier for us to do future upgrades,” says Toomey. “Bringing on the TSI team will bring a lot of improvements and upgrades to the cardiology templates.”