North Carolina Medicaid requiring Electronic Medical Records

[wenp69]

I recently learned that North Carolina Division of Medical Assistance will, as of June 1, 2019, require all dental offices that file NC Medicaid to have electronic medical records in place.  Roughly 25-30% of our patients are on NC medicaid. I spoke with a representative a few weeks ago at Care Stream.  I saw on the website that CS indicated they had no current plans to become EMR compliant.  I was then redirected to a secondary software called Amazing Charts.  I was told then that this was the only option for EMR in the CS family.  

Has anyone else run into this situation.  Best I can understand, we have 3 choices, run 2 separate programs at one time, stop seeing all medicaid patients, or switch to another dental software provider.  This problem is approaching rapidly, I wanted to see if anyone else has come up with a solution.

[wenp69]

I received an email from Carestream,  they obviously did not look at the info I had given them.  I am posting the link for the website that states this is a REQUIREMENT in NC for any provider receiving payment from NC Medicaid.  Has nothing to do with how much you receive.  This is not an option. It is a requirement.     What Does the Law Mandate? | NC Health Information Exchange Authority 

[cabaa99]

I also called NC Medicaid and they confirmed this is mandatory starting June 2019. I emailed my Carestream rep and I'm awaiting a response back from the development team. 

[wenp69]

Aldo have you heard anything from Carestream?  Very frustrating.  I am still waiting for a response as well.  I would like to know if we are the only three NC users that take medicaid.  If not perhaps the other users have had a work around.  I'm thinking that perhaps a shout out to the state board to see what software other providers are using.  

[cabaa99]

Wendy, I heard today that as of this time there are no plans to get PW certified as an EHR, even though there are quite a few users in NC. Unclear how many see Medicaid patients.

Carestream’s official answer remains to use Amazing Charts, which in my view is not integrated.

I’ll let you know if I hear something else.

[cabaa99]

Ugh! This is huge. We looked at Amazing Charts before and it means duplicating a lot of data entry to keep up two systems. Needless to say, that's a source for errors and discrepancies, which is the opposite of that the EMR initiative is shooting for, plus the added overhead on the practice side which means cost/less patient time.

We really need Carestream to step up and become EMR compliant. Else, it seems to me that if we are going to go thru the struggle to take on another system, we'd rather migrate to a one-system solution that deals with it fully and take the migration hit only once.

I hope they notice what big of a deal this is.

[wenp69]

So far they continue to treat this as optional.  Please continue to request that they review the attached link

What Does the Law Mandate? | NC Health Information Exchange Authority 

[tmslaug2]

We will be in the same situation so I am following your question.  Thanks for asking it.