Software helps doctors go paperless
 A Tarrytown software business is looking to capitalize on the medical profession's growing interest in storing patient data electronically rather than on paper, a shift driven by Washington and expected to change how doctors work over the next few years.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has announced that the federal government would develop a new national network of electronic medical records over the next decade, as well as develop standards for health information technology products. Those commitments, announced in late July, came six months after President Bush urged the medical profession to go all-electronic by 2014 - a call endorsed in June by the American Medical Association.
Four years before Bush issued that challenge in his State of the Union address, however, OmniMD™ had rolled out an Internet-based software solution usable with both PCs and hand-held PDAs. More than 800 doctors within 250 clinics nationwide use the system that is also called OmniMD™.
"We have studied the market and we have found that doctors want three things: The first is better patient care. The second is that their documentation is complete so that they are compliant with HIPAA (the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and legally covered for malpractice. And third, they want their practices to make the most money as fast as possible. This solution helps doctors accomplish all three," said Divan Da've, chief executive officer of OmniMD™.
OmniMD™ is a subsidiary of Da've's Integrated Systems Management (ISM) Inc., an IT consultancy specializing in the Internet and e-commerce development. Over the years it has had big-name clients such as Citibank, Fidelity Investments and computer seller Gateway Inc. Combined, the two businesses have $4.2 million in revenues and 150 employees - 25 in Tarrytown, the rest in India, where the companies carry out software development.
Over the next three years, Da've projects OmniMD™ alone will grow from its current $1.7 million portion of total revenues to between $20 million and $25 million a year. The company's work force would expand as well during that period from the current 45 to 100 people, with between 40 and 50 of the new hires taking place in Tarrytown and another 10 to 20 overseas.
Da've is also chief executive officer of ISM, which he launched in his home basement in 1989, and five years later moved the company to Tarrytown, at the time employing only four people. Da've imigrated to the United States in 1984 from Gujarat, India, where his grandfather served as the state's chief minister, the equivalent of a U.S. governor.
REALIZING A NEED
OmniMD™'s projected growth accounts for much of the revenue increase Da've's businesses are anticipating through 2007. A key factor is the large potential market among medical practices, many of which have only lately realized a need for electronic record keeping.
"The federal government has set out the right policy goal. But it's still very unclear whether we're going to see much significant change without significant government support. The question now is, how do you create a financial vehicle that allows private physicians to take advantage of this effort to go digital. Many of them do not see a good enough return on their investment to justify the cost," said William S. Bernstein of the New York City law firm Manatt Phelps Phillips L.L.P., which specializes in medical law.
On July 20, the American Academy of Family Physicians released a survey showing 40 percent of 788 respondents either having converted to electronic records or in the process of doing so. The study also found 49 percent of survey respondents wanted to purchase an electronic record-keeping system - 15 percent of them within one year and 16 percent within two years.
But The Medical Records Institute, a Boston group advocating electronic record keeping, identified numerous barriers in a July 23 survey of 436 health-care providers. The institute's Sixth Annual Survey of Electronic Health Record Trends and Usage identified the top six barriers, in order, were cost, lack of support from medical staff, the fact that many solutions require multiple vendors, the expense of digitizing paper records and uncertainty that a new system will recoup that expense.
Da've says his system addresses those issues by using only a single vendor, by being usable on multiple platforms, and by generating multiple savings for physicians, from the money spent purchasing paper charts for patient data to the time spent retrieving them.
"At 30 patients a day, you'd save 450 minutes, more than seven hours a day. That's one clerical person. And at $15 an hour for an 8-hour day, that's $120 a day you save," Da've said.
Doctors interested in OmniMD™ pay a starting fee of between $1,000 and $2,000, then $500 per month for a system that integrates billing, prescription and voice transcription services as well as laboratory and insurance data. Features include a scheduler, prescription writer, a document manager, and a system to remind patients of upcoming appointments. OmniMD™ can also verify patients' insurance eligibility within seconds, compared with several minutes using paper records.
Dr. Rajeev Sindhwani, a Westchester cardiologist who uses OmniMD™, said he signed up for transcription services about 18 months ago, then upgraded his service to include the scheduler and hand-held PDAs six months ago.
"It has completely changed my practice," said Sindhwani, one of seven physicians within the Pelham Group, a practice that sees 30 to 40 patients daily. "It makes sense to use since we are completely paperless in our office. We don't have any room for chart storage."
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