Arkansas Medical Record Company SOAPware Now in 50 states and 37 Countries on Arkansas Medical News Inc.

Arkansas Medical Record Company SOAPware Now in 50 states and 37 Countries

By: BECKY GILLETTE

Randall Oates

FAYETTEVILLE--Family practice practitioner Randall Oates, MD, initially got interested in electronic medical records (EMRs) in the early 1980s because he loved his very busy medical practice, but hated that charting took so much time away from patients. He wrote a protocol for EMRs based on his desire to make his medical practice more efficient while improving the doctor-patient relationship.

In 1992 Oates hired a programmer to turn his system into a commercial product. SOAPware EMR Solutions Inc., was born in 1994. Instead of going after venture capital, they built the company from the ground up. Today, SOAPware has proved so successful that it is now being used in all 50 states and 37 countries. More than 75 different medical specialties are using the product.

“We daily have 30,000 to 40,000 users of SOAPware,” Oates said. “We have calculated that we have four to five million patient records stored in the product. Most of the medical record products are built from technologists, computer type people trying to come in and satisfy the needs of the medical community. This came from the opposite direction, clinical people. And that is why it has more acceptance at the point of care. It works at the level of patient care.”

Oates said most computer interfaces to help doctors with patients are an intrusion. They are in the way. The whole focus at SOAPware is on helping the doctor-patient relationship rather than interfering with it.

“Our focus is on using the technology to liberate the physician rather than add to his or her burden,” Oates said.

It is estimated that there are more than 300 vendors of EMRs in the U.S. The website www.softwareadvice.com, in an article in May 2010, said a survey had shown SOAPware with about 12 percent of the market. No other single company had more than 17 percent of the market at the time.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study in 2009 showed that 56 percent of outpatient clinic and physician practices had no adoption of EMRs, and only six percent had fully functional EMRs. That number is expected to mushroom not only because this is becoming the standard of care, but because of federal stimulus payments to providers to adopt EMRs.

“Certainly the stimulus incentives have increased the growth of interest in this type of solution,” Oates said. “I actually knew long ago it was inevitable. I figured that out back in the early 1980s. It was just a matter of when.”

Physician practices and clinics that adopt EMRs by companies like SOAPware who are certified for meaningful use by the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology may be eligible for up to $44,000 in Medicare bonuses between 2011 and 2014, or $63,750 in Medicaid bonuses.

“We are committed to ensuring that practices using SOAPware will not be subject to penalties beginning in 2015,” Oates said. “If you are using SOAPware 2010, you are on track to meet those goals. The real challenge for medical practices will not be satisfying the meaningful use criteria, but doing so without decreasing productivity.”

While the subsidies are an important factor, Oates questions the wisdom of promoting adoption based solely on the expectation of government payments. “The main motivation when implementing any EMR should always be improving the quality of care and facilitating the doctor-patient relationship, while decreasing economic stress,” he said. “Regardless, it is our perception that the medical practices that will thrive, going forward, are those that begin working now to shift to better information management and connectedness.”

Oates said their product’s advantages over others in the marketplace include

improving productivity and efficiency immediately, and making doctor and patient’s experience better from day one. Other systems have the doctor turning his attention away from the patient to the computer. The way SOAPware implements it, the doctor doesn’t move focus away from patient.

“This should really be in the background,” Oates said. “My advice to other doctors is don’t go with any solution that isn’t going to immediately make life better for doctors and their patients.”

Oates no longer hates charting.

“Using the technology, I and the users of the software aren’t doing much charting,” Oates said. “It is done for me.”