Are you looking for your fix of daily Health IT News? Here is what went down over the last few weeks in US Health IT.

Allscripts sues CarePortMD
Lyft Joins Hands with Epic for patient ride scheduling
Athenahealth to Hire 100 more employees over the coming months
Strategies EHR Vendors use to stay stress-free amid the pandemic

Allscripts vs. CarePortMD

Who knew the EMR market could get this fierce, right? According to news sources, Allscripts has sued CarePortMD for using the brand name "CarePortMD" which they claimed is the same as one of their software offerings.

Allscripts believes that this would confuse potential clients and customers as both companies operate in the same healthcare IT space. On the other hand, CarePortMD maintains that they have followed all guidelines put forth by the US office of Patent and Trademark against which they were issued a lawful trademark on the name.

In the lawsuit, Allscripts has:

Asked for an injunction against CarePortMD to stop it from using the CarePortMD name.
Transfer of the registered name to Allscripts
Asked for the compensation caused by the alleged infringement.

Lyft Joining Hands with Epic

In another news, Lyft announced that they are integrating with Epic's Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software in an attempt to deepen its ties with healthcare providers. It will allow medical practitioners and hospital staff to schedule rides for their patients quickly. Epic is one of the largest electronic health record (EHR) companies in the telemedicine industry, and Lyft is the first ride-sharing company to integrate with them.

The primary aim was to enable hospital staff to schedule a ride for their patients directly from the Epic EMR application rather than shifting into a separate tool. For this purpose, Lyft is working now with Epic to create the integration successfully.

The ability to arrange a Lyft ride at the time of discharge will eventually lead to shorter waiting times, improved patient throughput, and less crowd in the waiting rooms. Apart from this, the patients can easily travel to the appointment and back home without any hassle or application needed. It will also allow the hospital staff to monitor appointment adherence and no-show rates of patients.

As a part of their integration program, Lyft is also enabling healthcare systems to generate reports to measure the impact of ride-sharing features on the overall health system in terms of their spending and population health outcomes. It will also include tracking patient segments to identify those that benefit from a Lyft ride. It also reduces the keyboard time and effort for our staff members and speeds up the process for ordering a Lyft ride.

Athenahealth to Hire 100 More Employees

While many companies around the world have let go of employees due to financial constraints brought about by the pandemic, athenahealth recently announced that it would be adding 100 new employees over the coming year to its Belfast, Maine-based office. This expansion comes as a result of rapid growth and demand for athena EMR and medical billing services. New hires will be trained remotely and continue working from home as will all existing employees for the foreseeable future.

Strategies EHR Vendors Stay Stress-Free Amid Pandemic

This pandemic has been stressful for all of us worldwide. For EHR vendors, this stress causes new pressures to provide prompt and quality service to healthcare organizations without compromising the safety of their employees.

Luckily, most EHR companies knew what to do and when. Here are the top strategies that they implemented.

Timely, relevant and effective communication with various departments/teams reduces stress and anxiety and enables employees to talk about their problems.
They connected with their employees by talking to them casually to create a connection, instead of having formal meetings to discuss problems.
The HR would frequently reach out to new staff to see if they require any assistance or even to talk to them to increase morale.
Some EHR vendors even started new traditions within the company that focus on virtual meetings. Meditech EHR launched a water cooler service where any member of the company could come forth and talk about any topic with a virtual gathering. It enabled Meditech to create a new tradition where employees could also socially connect.
They would offer their esteemed employees care packages to help increase the morale and spirit of their teams.

The importance these EHR vendors give to their employees is because it’s the collection of all the people in the company that make the company. So to make sure, your practice receives the best of healthcare services, EHR vendors have spent countless hours ensuring employee satisfaction. EHR vendors that have followed in these strategies have also shown profitable growth even in times like these.

What’s the Latest News in the World of EHR Softwares

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