GE Healthcare today unveiled a web-based electronic medical records solution.
The company’s Centricity Advance combines of EMR, practice management and patient portal solutions.
Using their own secure password, patients can log in from anywhere to schedule their appointments, request prescription refills or access billing statements, lab results and private messages from their clinicians, according to GE Healthcare.
Clinics that begin using GE’s service or a similar product may benefit from more than the convenience of a packaged practice management solution. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, part of the stimulus package, gives individual physicians the opportunity to collect $44,000 from the government. The legislation took effect in April.
Other companies have entered the EMR space in the last couple years, including Practice Fusion, which offers a free, advertising supported, system for small and medium practices. Upfront costs for GE’s Centricity Advance product will range between $4,000 and $9,000 and subscription fees from $300 to $800 per month, according to GE. Athenahealth also offers a web-based EMR product.
GE Healthcare and the conglomerate’s financing arm, GE Capital, launched a program aimed at accelerating adoption of its suite of electronic medical records products in June 2009. The company offered $100 million in interest-free, deferred-payment loans to doctors’ offices.
