Custom Electronic Medical Record System
Comprehensive EMR (Electronic Medical Record) system for private group of clinics from the USA, specializing in mental health. Easy and quick management of patient mental information and accompanying billing documents. System integrations with insurance companies and clearinghouses.
Duration: 12+ months, ongoing
Technologies & Tools
- PHP Symfony
- React JS
Project Background
Our client, a group of clinics from the USA who is specified on mental health, decided to build a comprehensive EMR (Electronic Medical Record) system for their group of clinics. Firstly they implemented it in one clinic, we’ve tested the MVP version and later other clinics were added to this system as well, and the entire network of clinics appeared. Before contacting us this client was using an out-of-the-box solution, which had a range of issues:
- poor user interface;
- the solution did not match the realities, and any market change was difficult to support;
- any requests for system improvement took too much time.
Our task was to build a tool to easily and quickly management of patient mental information and all accompanying billing documents — one of the most important parts of the system. As nobody can envision an American healthcare system without insurance, our task also was to provide the system with the integrations with insurance companies and clearinghouses.
To properly work out the system solution our clients were engaged in the requirements elicitation process. As a result of this collaboration our business analysts:
- identified stakeholders;
- identified the necessity of integration with third-party companies (e.g. clearinghouses and insurance companies);
- identified workflows of client’s processes (e.g. Billing Process);
- entity-relationship diagram (ERD) of health entities.
EMR Platform Functionality
This system is a platform designed specifically for clinics’ staff and their patients. Based on HIPAA compliance access to the platform is controlled and divided according to the permissions. The platform consists of two portals: Provider Portal and Patient Portal.
The preliminary set of system functionalities you can see in the list below:
- Add a Patient — Allowed User: Provider’s Office; Portal: Provider Portal.
- View a Patient — Allowed User: Provider’s Office, Physician, Patient; Portal: Provider Portal, Patient Portal.
- Collect a Payment — Allowed User: Provider’s Office; Portal: Provider Portal.
- Create a SuperBill, Claim, and Statement — Allowed User: Provider’s Office, Medical Biller; Portal: Provider Portal.
- Set an Appointment — Allowed User: Patient, Provider’s Office; Portal: Patient Portal, Provider Portal.
As all work in the system is related to a patient, one of the most crucial functionality is patient management. Healthcare professionals (Physicians, Nurses, Lab Technicians, etc.) should have to search and operate with patient info effectively.
There is a bit complicated billing process with several involved users: Provider’s Professionals (Provider’s Office, Medical Biller, etc.), Insurance Companies, Clearinghouses, and Patient. During this process, such documents as SuperBill, Claim, and Statement are produced. That is why we’ve focused on the feature of creating all these types of documents.
EMR Provider Portal Overview
Team
Our team structure for EMR System development
Business Analyst
UX/UI Designer
Back-end Engineers
Front-end Engineers
QA Engineer
Project Manager
Process
As in most projects, our team and client agreed upon the Agile development process, which was split into iterations (sprints) with a length of 4 weeks. At the end of each iteration, the team showed the performed work to the client and, as a result, delivered product functionality.
Results
The EMR system is still under development. While designing the architecture of this system, we learned a lot about HIPAA compliance and deepened our expertise in its development. We’ve gained valuable knowledge about the billing process, including the involved roles and produced documents. We are still working on improving lots of processes in the healthcare domain to help people enhance their productivity.
Our future goal is a mobile application created that will allow providers professionals and patients to gain significant health information in a real-time mode without access to a web portal.