BIRKEY.COM - CUSTOM PROGRAMMING
CLIENT
Caring
Medical & Rehabilitation Services
Oak Park, Illinois
THE
OBJECTIVE
Develop a user-friendly patient
management system that would improve the speed of scheduling appointments,
help reduce user error, and facilitate meaningful analysis
of patient information on hundreds of thousands of archived
records.
THE
CHALLENGE
A well-established natural medicine
clinic, Caring
Medical & Rehabilitation Services, was struggling
with an outdated, inefficient DOS-based patient management
system that was not meeting the practice’s needs. Scheduling
appointments was a cumbersome and time-consuming process, and
years of collected data were not being used.
| BEFORE: The
former DOS-based software hampered efficiency and
allowed many opportunities for user error. |
|

| AFTER: The
new MedEx software is not only user-friendly, it
saves staff members significant amounts of time,
allowing them to better serve patients. |
|
As Executive
Director Marion Hauser notes, “We
weren’t using our current software to its maximum capability
because we didn’t know how. Plus,
the software, like all out-of-the-box patient management
systems we’ve looked at, had applications centered
around insurance carriers, which didn’t fit our needs.
We needed a solution that would make scheduling fast and
easy for our front desk personnel as well as allow us to
analyze years worth of patient data we had collected, stored
and never done anything with.”
THE
SOLUTION
BIRKEY.COM created
a custom patient management system (MedEx) for Caring
Medical & Rehabilitation Services that tracks appointments,
schedules and patients. The software allows personnel to track
treatments and invoices. Plus, it reports important statistical
information on hundreds of thousands of records in a SQL Server
database.
“Not
only has MedEx been a major time saver, like allowing us to
schedule repeat appointments in one simple step,” says
Marion. “But
we now can manage our data in quantifiable, objective ways.
We can find out what
kind of marketing is working as well as determine effectiveness
rates on particular treatments. A report can be created for
anything we input. The possibilities are endless.”
Both
the BIRKEY.COM team
and the staff at Caring
Medical & Rehabilitation Services agree that good communication
played an important role in the successful development, delivery
and deployment of the custom software application. Marion notes
that because members of the BIRKEY.COM team spent time watching
her staff use the old software, they were able to identify
the problems and know how to solve them.
Dave
Gruen, BIRKEY.COM project
manager gives a lot of credit for the project’s success to
the client’s willingness to participate in the process.
“At
every step of the way, the staff at Caring
Medical & Rehabilitation Services expressed
its wants and needs,” says
Dave. “Because
the communications between the end user and the
development team was so open, we were able to deliver a product
that hit the mark.”
In
addition, everyone agrees that the application is extremely user-friendly
and requires almost no training to use. As Marion enthusiastically
says, “MedEx has
been a breeze for the whole staff. We absolutely love it.” |
| PROJECT
STUDY | MedEx |
| • |
MedEx
manages over 200,000 records (and growing) dating
back nearly 10 years |
| • |
Over
25 networked PC's are tied into the MedEx system seamlessly
and securely |
| • |
MedEx
was developed in Microsoft Visual Basic and SQL Server
by in-house BIRKEY.COM staff. |
| • |
MedEx
connects to the SQL Server database using ADO drivers
for greater speed. |
| • |
MedEx
requires a 10MB client application which takes only
15-30 minutes to install and configure. |
| • |
Reports
can be printed out to mimic the data and layouts
of outside billing sources |
| • |
MedEx
provides instant messaging capability within the
network |
| • |
MedEx
sends automatic e-mail reminders to patients in
advance of upcoming appointments |
|
|