PediNotes Feature Spotlight: Seamless Billing Integration

PediNotes was designed by neonatologists and pediatricians to improve the way we work and communicate across all hospital departments. Our program improves efficiencies not just to save time conducting patient rounds and sharing data, it is also built to accommodate valuable integrations like Vermont Oxford Network exports and an in-program billing platform. PediNotes’ billing integration provides all users access to easily review patient billing details and complete billing in one dashboard.

Set Custom Billing Rules in PediNotes

Neonatologists have numerous billing rules we must follow based on the age of the baby, the baby’s weight, or in accordance with the diagnoses or procedures conducted. PediNotes allows you to create billing rules that work in the background to ensure all billing details are correct across your team and patients.

When a user goes to create a bill, you can set up PediNotes to display a warning if they are using an incorrect code. PediNotes can be set to display either a soft warning, which will allow users to continue billing even after they’ve been warned, or a hard stop, which requires users to fix the issue before completing the bill. For instance, a hard stop we use in our practice prevents us from using a code limited to babies under 1500 grams when the baby is over 1600 grams.

Setting up your own billing rules in PediNotes ensures you will maintain compliance for your group and guarantees your full team is following the same guidelines. By establishing clear rules to manage billing parameters in PediNotes, your team saves hours by limiting the amount of time needed to review bills when they are completed and exported as well. All bills should already adhere to the compliance guidelines for your practice.

PediNotes’ billing features are beneficial to neonatologists as well as consultants and any other providers who use the program. Custom, specific rules can be set depending on the needs of your practice and the various specialists PediNotes needs to accommodate.

Utilize Billing Reports & Billing Filters

In PediNotes, each user is able to bill whenever is convenient for their schedule. You can bill on the date you see the patient, at any time of the month, or even bill as you’re seeing the patient. The best timesaver we’ve found at our practice is to use the menu setting to view all the patients we’ve seen in a day and complete all of the day’s billing at one time.

In addition to easily creating bills, PediNotes allows you to run billing reports that show patients who have missed billing. Each individual user of PediNotes can run and check this report before the billing date is due.

PediNotes’ billing module also gives you the ability to create billing filters. You can set your most common codes and essentially create an electronic “super bill.” This allows you to put all your delivery codes in one place, all your NICU level 3 babies in one place, or all well babies together. These filters help your team save a significant amount of time. Users no longer have to spend time searching for the details they need to view because they can use these established filters to find the information they need much more quickly.

Once billing is complete, you can generate reports for your practice in an HL7 format to easily import into other billing programs as needed.

In our practice, we’ve been billing within PediNotes for around 10 years. The custom rules and easy in-program dashboard improve our efficiency completing billing tasks and save countless hours for our team.

PediNotes is designed to help improve the experience and efficiency of working in neonatal and pediatric practices. If you would like an interactive look at our billing integration or any of our software’s other beneficial features, please send us an email at info@pedinotes.com, give us a call at (225) 214-6421, or sign up for a free demo.

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Vermont Oxford Network Data Extraction is Easy with PediNotes

In our development of PediNotes, we sought to find as many ways as possible to make processes more efficient across hospital departments. Our neonatal EMR is equipped to not only help neonatologists and pediatricians, but also provides much-needed support for nurses, pharmacists, hospital administration, and more. Specific features include billing integrations, database exports, and efficient internal and external communication.

One commonly overlooked benefit of PediNotes for neonatologists and neonatal nurse practitioners is the use of Vermont Oxford Network (VON) database extraction. With this data housed in PediNotes, we’ve developed a process that pulls all the information you need, exports it for the VON, and allows you to check the status of your VON submissions.

How does PediNotes make VON data extraction easier?

Manual entry of data into eNICQ is very time-consuming and unnecessary when you have access to the proper tools.

PediNotes has been a part of the Vermont Oxford Network for years. Around eight years ago, we created a process in our software to systemize electronic data extraction for all the data required for the VON. Our team created a series of rules that will pull answers to VON questions based on the babies’ diagnoses or the procedures the babies have had.

With PediNotes’ background configuration, we have set up tools that you can manipulate to determine which diagnosis you want to use to answer the VON questions, what procedures you want to appear, and how your lab may specify a possible bacterial culture report. You can customize all of these things, so when PediNotes extracts the data into eNICQ it will already be in the format that you need.

Because of PediNotes’ data warehousing and easy configuration tools, VON data extraction has become a 1-step process. You go into the main menu, pick VON data extraction, and it will automatically pull the data for babies based on what registry you are in. You can choose the timeframe for your patient parameters to pull specific data from the past month, the past week, etc. You can also pull data specifically by medical record number or by account number.

PediNotes then displays these patients in a grid with the VO number in the front column and all of the baby’s information. You can sort this grid and export all data or data for select patients as needed.

After exporting your VON data from PediNotes, the only question you’ll need to manually answer when you go into eNICQ is whether the baby is still in the hospital. All other data will be recorded in the eNICQ database automatically.

Checking VON Data Status in PediNotes

PediNotes’ powerful interoperability allows our program to read and display the current status of eNICQ data, such as your new patient status.

Your patient will not have a number if they have never been admitted to eNICQ. However, if you’ve already submitted the patient’s data, PediNotes will show you the status you would see on the first page of eNICQ. It will read complete or correct, or it will have an error or incomplete message for babies that are missing data.

Access to this status information in PediNotes allows you to easily determine which patients need further work and update their data accordingly. Using the grid in PediNotes, you can then export only the incomplete patients to the Vermont Oxford Network.

How much time is saved extracting VON data through PediNotes?

Electronic extraction of VON database information saves us hours and hours. For our largest unit, which has about 1200 admissions a year, we spend fewer than 12 hours a year maintaining and extracting our database.

We’ve agreed as a team to answer the VON questions in PediNotes in a certain fashion, making the data easier to pull and more consistent. We also include very specific sections like respiratory therapy and delivery in PediNotes that are based on how VON data is organized. For example, we select whether a baby has been on CPAP as part of the patient data in PediNotes. These questions are designed to save time in the long run because they mimic the data that the VON needs to extract.

Because all this data is systematically entered and stored in PediNotes, we don’t have to spend time manually reviewing and extracting the information. Everything flows directly through once we extract for the VON database. As mentioned, the only manual time our team spends in eNICQ is to answer the one question confirming whether the patient is still in the hospital.

PediNotes has transformed the tedious process of Vermont Oxford Network data extraction into a much more efficient task, allowing us to submit all of our data quickly and timely, so we can get back to tending to the needs of our patients.

If you’d like to see an up-close look at VON data extraction in PediNotes or any of our software’s other beneficial features, please send us an email at info@pedinotes.com, give us a call at (225) 214-6421, or sign up for a free demo.

Our demo is very interactive. We’ll walk you through PediNotes and give you access to a cloud-based version of the program that you can use to manipulate patient information.

Please also subscribe to our email list to receive notifications about our latest blogs and updates to PediNotes.

Using PediNotes with MEDITECH

How does PediNotes improve working in MEDITECH?

As a modular EMR, PediNotes is designed to sit on top of your hospital’s EMR to pull and organize data into a streamlined user interface, provide access to additional features, and improve your clinical team’s communication. PediNotes was developed in a MEDITECH environment, and its powerful interoperability has proven to be a valuable enhancement for the robust EMR.

The tools we have in PediNotes are very neonatal-specific. We’ve developed the software to access mother and infant data in real-time to suit our needs in the NICU. The way PediNotes is organized and the additional features it provides helps neonatologists work with an EMR in a way that makes sense with how we work in the NICU. All the information generated in PediNotes gets pulled into MEDITECH as well, including reports and notes, with seamless interoperability.

How does PediNotes improve user-centered design?

We all want to give great clinical care, but in today’s world there is so much information to digest, and it’s in so many different places. Interoperability allows us to bring all of this information from your hospital’s EMR together in PediNotes to make it easier to find and manipulate when you need it.

Our software is all about the end user. PediNotes was developed by neonatologists and clinicians in a NICU environment. We get new ideas for our program from people who actually use it including neonatologists, pediatric subspecialists, and other clinical and ancillary providers in the NICU. These users have had a major impact on the design of PediNotes and its user-centered design.

What neonatal features does PediNotes add to MEDITECH?

We developed PediNotes because the EMR tools that were available to us as neonatologists did not fulfill the needs we have in the NICU.

PediNotes was created to work with the unique ways we as neonatologists interact with our patients and their mothers. It has tools that we need to use on a daily basis. In PediNotes, you can order neonatal-specific tasks like all aspects of neonatal nutrition (bolus or gavage feedings, TPN) and let PediNotes perform detailed nutrition data for babies. Tracking and ordering the numerous respiratory changes of the NICU patient is simple with our respiratory CPOE system. Radiology studies from your hospital’s imaging system are displayed in PediNotes and a customizable neonatal formulary assures accurate dosing for the neonatal patient. You can also create custom growth charts in addition to the standard neonatal growth charts contained in PediNotes.

PediNotes allows you to work with multiple patient function tabs open simultaneously. Most users work with vitals, respiratory settings/labs, exams, orders, I/O, laboratory, and diagnosis tabs open at the same time to increase efficiency. Each user has the capability to create the information layout that works for them.

How is MEDITECH data improved in PediNotes?

With powerful interoperability, PediNotes seamlessly pulls and organizes data from multiple sources into one platform. PediNotes improves your level of access to this data because you can control where you see and how you manipulate the information.

Our in-program data analytics in PediNotes also allows you to answer your own questions by filtering through the data you need without having to consult a third party.

Why use PediNotes in addition to your hospital’s EMR?

Babies are not small adults, yet every EMR available tries to treat them as such. PediNotes should be used in the NICU because it gives your clinical team access to tools that are not available in commercial EMRs and are essential for neonatal and pediatric care.

The government recently issued a report about all the features that should be included in a neonatal EMR, and PediNotes is proud to already have a platform that has these capabilities. 

 PediNotes also gives neonatologists information the way that we were trained. Our improved user interface and customizable display will help increase your team’s efficiency, so they have more time to care for their patients.

What ROI can you expect from PediNotes?

The ROI with PediNotes starts with happier caregivers in the NICU. The teams we’ve seen use PediNotes are able to work more efficiently because our EMR has all of the tools they need.

 With PediNotes, Vermont Oxford Data extraction is also done with the push of a button. This saves hours of time inputting data and reviewing it to complete an ongoing, basic task in your practice.

PediAnalytics, our reporting tool within PediNotes, provides valuable data that can be used in conferences as well.

If you want to learn more about how MEDITECH works with PediNotes, send us an email at info@pedinotes.com, give us a call at (225) 214-6421, or sign up for a free demo. Our demo is very interactive. We’ll walk you through PediNotes and give you access to a cloud-based version of the program that you can use to manipulate patient information.

Please also subscribe to our email list to receive notifications about further updates to PediNotes.

PediNotes Software Updates that Enhance MEDITECH

PediNotes is a tool designed by neonatologists and pediatricians to make our clinical tasks easier and more efficient. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our unique EMR with added features, seamless experiences, and a user-friendly interface that saves our clinicians time. We recently implemented two new features into PediNotes to improve everyday processes in our hospitals: Auto-Admit and Auto-Order.

These two features are invaluable to our clinical teams. Both run automatically in PediNotes to admit patients and complete orders based on your specified parameters. Through powerful interoperability, these features work with MEDITECH by pulling in the data you’re collecting in your EMR to complete admissions and orders seamlessly within PediNotes.

New PediNotes Feature: Auto-Admission

With seamless auto-admissions, clinicians no longer need to waste time inputting patient information into software to complete the admissions process. Our auto-admission process pulls both mother and infant data into PediNotes from your hospital’s EMR to auto-admit patients and assign them to your specified locations.

Neonatal information is used to determine the patient’s template in PediNotes, and the maternal information is pulled into the patient’s notes. The PediNotes HL7 viewer shows all of the information being collected and organized from the mother and baby. You can view this as the auto-admit script is running in the background of PediNotes.

While the auto-admission process is running, you are also able to click on the patient being admitted to view medical history and other details.

With auto-admission, maternal and neonatal information fields are populated with data from the mother’s chart and infant delivery information. Using parameters you specify, PediNotes will populate pregnancy, birth, nutritional, neonatal diagnoses and care plans which are specific to gestational age. Powerful clinical decision support ensures that appropriate diagnoses are entered on each patient saving a clinician’s time and improving patient care.

New PediNotes Feature: Auto-Order

Auto-order is another feature we’ve added to PediNotes to save time and make processes easier for clinicians. You have full control to create and customize plans in PediNotes for every ICD-10 diagnosis. Each plan can be configured as text or an auto-order plan. Plans designated as auto-order can be configured to place orders for a specific time(s) or on user-customized schedules.

Auto-order makes CPOE more efficient. For example, in an infant with jaundice, common plans such as “single bank phototherapy” or bilirubin (AM/PM) will automatically order the equipment and labs. Plans can be continued on a daily basis, modified to another plan, converted to text only or discontinued with a single click. There is no need to leave the Diagnosis/Care Plan page for CPOE.

The auto-order feature saves time and is very customizable, giving you more opportunities to make PediNotes compatible with the way you work in your nursery.

We’ve developed PediNotes as a tool to help you take better care of your patients by improving efficiency and communication within your clinical team. If you have ideas for new features in PediNotes, we are always happy to hear them. Send us an email at info@pedinotes.com or give us a call at (225) 214-6421. You can also subscribe to our email list to be notified as we roll out more updates to our neonatal EMR.

Data in PediNotes: PediAnalytics Updates & Power BI

As a tool developed by neonatologists for neonatologists and pediatricians, PediNotes was built with powerful data features ranging from intuitive in-program functions to high-level data warehousing. Our team understands how clinically important data is both in the NICU and other hospital departments.

PediNotes is designed to allow doctors, clinicians, and nurses to be able to easily find and get data out of our software any time they want, rather than depending on a third-party tool to help them pull analytics. PediAnalytics are the in-program data analytics that you can run on your own in PediNotes. Functions include real-time analytics, data retrieval, and pre-packaged reporting.

One of the most recent improvements we’ve made to PediAnalytics is the ability to export a spreadsheet with data based on parameters defined by the user. This data can then be analyzed in spreadsheet form or through Microsoft’s Power BI, a free tool that can be used to manipulate and visually organize data.

In this blog, we’re taking a look at the different types of data you can track in PediAnalytics, how to export it from PediNotes, and what you can do with it for further analysis.

How to Use PediAnalytics + Export a Spreadsheet

PediAnalytics was designed with the user in mind. The program itself is very easy to use in the PediNotes interface – you do not have to be a programmer to operate it.

The PediAnalytics tab is located in the main menu of the PediNotes interface. To run search queries for data, use basic “and” / “or” search parameters. PediAnalytics allows you to set filters by birth date, admission date, and more to run queries and generate reports with your data. When this data is returned in PediAnalytics, you can use filters to easily organize it based on the information you’re looking for, or you can click on a patient of interest to visit that patient’s specific screen.

Data organized in PediAnalytics includes patient name, account number, birth date and place, demographic data, gestational ages, and more.

Queries can be saved in PediNotes to easily pull data you need on a regular basis like admissions information, positive blood culture, sex differences, gestational ages, low birth weights, etc.

One new feature of PediAnalytics is the ability to group data within a query. Once the data is returned from your initial search, you can use “and” / “or” search parameters to create sub groups based on your specifications. This adds more complex functionality to PediAnalytics and gives you the opportunity to create highly detailed queries and reports as needed.

Another new feature of PediAnalytics is the ability to export your customized reports. The embedded worksheet can be saved as an Excel workbook, PDF, CSV, or TXT file.

Overall, PediAnalytics gives you easy, bedside access to all of your patient data and allows you to export this data for further analysis as needed.

Using Power BI to Analyze PediAnalytics Data

After exporting data from PediAnalytics, our team uses Microsoft’s Power BI to analyze the information further and create graphs and other graphics. Power BI is a free product that is available for anyone to download. Although the program may look complicated at first glance, it’s very easy to use.

Analyzing data helps us answer the question why do I do what I do? We often look at data on a yearly basis to compare and analyze year-to-year trends.

Power BI also has the functionality to pull real-time data through the PediNotes Data Cube to return analytics based on parameters you define on a regular basis.

How Often is PediNotes Updated?

Although PediNotes can be used as a standalone application, the strength of our EMR is its interoperability. As a modular EMR, PediNotes pulls and organizes data from multiple sources, like the existing hospital’s EMR, and allows you to interact with it in a user-friendly interface. Ultimately, PediNotes allows you to save more time to focus on your patients.

PediNotes is based off ideas from a community of neonatologists, administrators, nursing staff, and specialists. We are constantly finding new ways to improve our EMR as these experts find new functionalities they need that aren’t currently available.

We release new updates for PediNotes every two to three months after extensive beta testing. It’s important for us to make sure that our updates work well and provide more value to our product before they are released.

Our bottom line is to make PediNotes a tool that helps you take better care of your patients. If you have ideas for new features in PediNotes that we haven’t provided, we are always happy to hear them. Send us an email at info@pedinotes.com or give us a call at (225) 214-6421. Working together is how we make PediNotes better for everyone.

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Data You Can Learn From

An EMR is a necessary, although not always popular, tool that helps caregivers take better care of their patients. While all EMRs store data, not all of them do so in a way that makes the data easy to access and enhances a physician’s ability to make better decisions. This is where PediNotes stands out - we designed it from a clinician’s perspective with a focus on helping neonatologists learn from what they do.  

“I think the most important thing we all need to know when taking care of our patients is why we do the things that we do and what are the outcomes,” says Dr. Steve Spedale. In PediNotes, everything is tied to a diagnosis, whether that’s ordering a lab, radiology test, etc. This helps you and your team understand the reasons behind your actions so you can learn from and improve your decision making going forward.

Sharing Data, Saving Time

One of PediNotes’ most critical features, besides improving your efficiency during each day, is the data collection. PediNotes makes it really easy through in-program data analytics for you to get the information you need to understand patient treatment. You don’t have to contact information systems to write reports; you do it yourself when you’re ready. This is just one of the many ways in which PediNotes is designed to save time and simplify processes, giving caregivers greater satisfaction as they carry out their work.

Ready to Join the PediNotes Family?

When you’re ready to take greater control of your data and time in your NICU, you can sign up for a free, interactive demo with PediNotes by visiting https://www.pedinotes.com/request-a-demo.

You can also subscribe to our newsletter to stay in step with us, get the latest blog posts, and learn more about our neonatal-focused EMR solutions.

Using PediNotes for Clinical Improvement in the NICU

With PediNotes, caregivers can collect and manage patient data more efficiently, reducing stress on the NICU team and elevating the standard of care for young lives. In today’s video blog we explore the specialized data features that will make your workflow as a physician easier and more natural, while you free up your time for other tasks that matter. 

What’s the Cube?  

One of the ways PediNotes drives clinical improvement is powerful in-program analytics, which we refer to as the data cube or data warehouse. The cube allows you to create data dashboards that track data in real time. “Among my favorite dashboards are the real-time shots of all the nurseries and all the different patients that we have, type of ventilators in use, etc.,” says Dr. Steve Spedale. 

How Does Real-Time Data Impact the NICU?

Real-time data feeds, like clinical indicators and laboratory values, are critical because they let you know what’s going on in the NICU at all times. Not only will the NICU team know, but you can also use the dashboards to share important information with parents, other clinicians, and administrators. The data cube makes information available to everyone who is involved with and concerned about the patient’s welfare.

In addition, tracking data in real time gives you access to useful information, even before patients get discharged. “If you’re tracking pneumothoraces, and you know that each year you have 4%, then what you really want to know is, based on improvements you’re making, how is that number changing? With real-time data, you can compare how your NICU is performing for your patients today vs. how it was performing last year, to see if it’s worse or better,” says Dr. Steve Spedale.  

Easily Access Time-Saving Information   

PediNotes helps us track babies in our nursery on cue-based feeds along with the different parameters involved. By tracking this information electronically, we’re able to create dashboards with more specific data like length of stay and discharge weight. 

PediNotes also helps transport centers. By creating a dashboard for transport information, it saves time and makes it easy to distribute transport data to administrators. It also eliminates the need for doing additional reports. This is one of many time-saving functionalities that PediNotes offers to improve workflow. We designed PediNotes so that all the information you need to take care of your patient is easier to find, in less time, and in fewer clicks.

Summing It All Up

Since PediNotes was designed by neonatologists, it uniquely targets and resolves inefficiencies that NICU caregivers face. A neonatal EMR should be centered around data that’s rich, relevant, and easy to access. That’s what our software delivers, and we strive to improve it based on the feedback from our users. 

At PediNotes, we like to say an institution, specifically a NICU, can only be as great as the technology that its caregivers are empowered with. When a hospital brings PediNotes on board, it takes an innovative step in the right direction for the patients and doctors of today and tomorrow.

My team and I invite you to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with future blog posts and updates regarding PediNotes.