CARMEL, Ind., June 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Upon joining
BehaviorCorp as medical director in 1990, Dr, Jerry Sheward, M.D.
recognized the glaring need for then non-existent electronic
medical records (EMR) to enable the multi-location behavior health
care organization to optimize the services it provided to adults
and children in the Indianapolis area and across Central Indiana.
The practice’s UNIX-based practice management (PM) solution, apart
from residing on a reliable but closed operating system, was not
user friendly, and therefore didn’t provide what Dr. Sheward and
his colleagues viewed as the right platform for EMR solutions to
come.
Compounding these challenges was the fact that the system did
not address specific requirements of psychiatric practices and
offices, which, unlike general and other specialty practices, in
addition to Joint Commission accreditation also must adhere to the
strict requirements of a myriad of other governmental and
regulatory agencies. While Dr. Sheward identified seven psychiatric
practice-centric management systems by the 2000-2001 timeframe,
including solutions from NextGen and A4, among others, he found
them still too heavily geared toward general medical practices.
Testing a variety of these, BehaviorCorp in 2002 chose
MedInformatix Inc.’s Practice Management solution for its new
office platform, adding clinical functionality the following year
working in lock step with the vendor to develop custom features for
a psychiatric practice.
“The Joint Commission, Indiana, Medicare, Medicaid and other
agencies each have regulations as they relate to behavioral health
practices covering patient treatments and outcomes. The fact that
we provide treatment planning; outpatient, residential and group
home services; foster care assistance; and, substance abuse
treatment to 12,000 patients each year demanded a customized
solution,” said Dr. Sheward, now vice president and chief medical
officer of Carmel-based Aspir
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