Ingenix teams up with AMA

PROVIDENCE – Ingenix CareTracker, the electronic health record system developed by the former LighthouseMD – now part of UnitedHealth Group’s Ingenix division, but still based here – is getting a big boost from the American Medical Association.
Ingenix and the AMA have teamed up to help physicians use EHRs to enhance patient care, simplify administration and improve clinical efficiency, and as part of that collaboration, the AMA has chosen CareTracker as the first EHR system offered through its new online health information solutions platform for physicians.
The platform, which will launch nationwide later this year, is now being beta-tested in Michigan, in collaboration with the Michigan State Medical Society. The goal of the platform is to give doctors access to information, products and services with a single, secure login.
“Increasing use of EHRs and health information technology overall will be essential to improving patient outcomes and reducing the administrative burdens on doctors,” said Dr. Joseph M. Heyman, immediate past board chair of the AMA. “Ingenix CareTracker is an excellent example of a health information technology that will help advance physicians’ adoption of tools that will enhance care quality and improve patient safety.”
The CareTracker brand is well known to doctors nationwide for its practice management system and billing services. The EHR component is the latest addition to CareTracker and still nowhere near as widely used, but it has been gaining ground rapidly, sold as a fully integrated solution for doctors, with no major hardware or software investments to make because the system is Web-based.
Ingenix has seized the opportunities created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – which provides up to $44,000 per doctor over five years in federal incentives for EHR adoption – and is actively promoting the CareTracker package.
In January, the company launched a loan program that allows doctors who sign up to use the software with no out-of-pocket costs and no payments until 2011, when ARRA reimbursements for EMRs are slated to begin. The program requires “meaningful use” of EHRs, and Ingenix is guaranteeing that it will help doctors meet those requirements.
For more information, visit www.ingenix.com/ehr, or the AMA’s health care IT page.
For a comprehensive local resource on EHRs with doctors’ perspectives, visit www.docEHRtalk.org, created by the Rhode Island Quality Institute.