Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Instant Medical History

Hi gang,

Could some of you who are using Instant Medical History comment on whether you find it helpful, and how you use it? How do you implement it in your office? Do you also have the web portal feature, and if so, do your patients use it?

Thanks,

V.

I would like to know the same. But, my main interest is can anyone convince me it is worth $50.00 per month. If you think about it that is $150 more than Amazing Charts per year. $199 per year, maybe.

I've been trying it out lately, and have concluded that it could have a place in my practice.

IMH and AC seemed to work well together. I got them to talk to each other after only brief puzzlement.

The IMH/user interface is ideal for a tablet PC. You can just tap on the big buttons with your stylus; it's just like a touchscreen kiosk that you might have used anywhere.

I am not sure how they justify the biggish monthly pricetag, unless they have to pay monthly licensing fees for the psychological screening tests they include.

I probably would have looked into it more, but things just went wrong logistically. I did the trial of IMH quite a long time ago at the same time as I received a trial from AC. They did work well together, but IMH's ability to customer was not out yet or didn't work well. So, a year later when it did; IMH was nice enough to give me a new trial, but AC would not or did not respond. Now, I don't know if either would. It would be easier if a trial of either sort of came with the other.

Maybe they should either remove the psychological screening tests which seems a bit much or have more than one version. Given, that in pediatrics with a room full of sick and hyper kids, setting up a computer for a Kiosk would not be very practical, I would want to use it for my MA asking questions for certain chief complaints such as chronic headaches, acute mild abdominal pain, chronic abdominal pain, etc. That would be very helpful. But, I still can't afford the $50.00.

Bert,

If it saves me time and makes me productive - instead of just generating a lot of text I'm going to have to spend time editing OUT of my notes - I may consider the $50 a bargain. What I NEED though, before experimenting on my patients, is someone with a fairly busy practice to tell me how it has worked for them, how they like it, etc.

Is there ANYBODY out there??? PLEASE speak up.

Thanks,

V.

Wcoghill uses it. It's on Dr. Coghill's website. There's a link to her website through the User List.

bcmd

Vinny,

I would love to try it again. I feel like I have had enough shots and need to put more money in the parking meter.

But, if there were a way to have it easy for both AC and IMH to allow a trial period at the same time. And, maybe if IMH could add a rather substantial discount for an annual subscription, say $495 rather than $600.

I seem to remember a number of folks wanting to do this more face to face with the patient, walking them thru it. Whether with an MA, Nurse person or the doc themselves. Not on line or in the waiting room. Not to appear cheap here; but might there be a way to add this more as a feature without the expensive middleman??? I agree with those who raised the point of self reports being fraught with problems and issues and it is better to let a trained professional tease them out. I know, I studied a ton of Psych and self reports have a number of potential failure and inaccuracy points. It seems to me that it would be a very natural kind of thing to have an EMR feature that would allow a Doc to create their own customized list to quickly drill down for first visit or CPE's and GYN's and the like. Now I can easily remember to hit the majority of points I want to hit...

If we are just going to drill down a check list of possible issues and customize it to our own wants and needs, couldn't this just be a nice feature in the EMR and cut out the middleman? Have such a middleman only for those who want to set up the on-line kind of stuff?

I agree completely. I understand those who want to use it in a kiosk fashion or at home online, and this would probably be helpful for an adult practice.

I think letting the patient fill it in would work well for the first visit even in the room. I recall with IMH, you could maximize the program, and the patient could not disconnect from it or minimize it to see the computer screen.

Again, this is just my preference, but it would be incredibly helpful for taking complete histories on complaints which have a very large differential. Today I saw a child with chronic, intermittent fever and took a rather thorough review of systems, but didn't remember to ask if she had any previous UTIs until the end. A computer wouldn't forget that once it was customized by the provider.

I shouldn't keep harping on this. I agree with the idea of cutting out the middleman. But, the only time I start talking about cutting one out, is when his or her price is too high. I don't think $50 monthly is too much to pay; it is WAY too much to pay. But, for some, it sounds like it is worth it.

Why not just give Jon $250-$500 bucks a piece to design it right from the get-go, and have it as an intergrated part of AC for all to easily use forever and for always??? Perhaps I don't know enough about how these things work, but as we used to post a lot back when, wouldn't we all just rather give our dollars to AC straight up...
Be IMH or some sort of module to allow the easy use of multiple format documents and faxes like UPDox. The "E" Rx's too. Seems that just never worked as well as it was intended to. How about a "Fax Rx?" button and instead of printing it faxes straight out in a list of Pharmacies that we can easily build with a nice practice coversheet from the practice info. I think many of us balked on some of the possible PM programs because of the difficultly and multiple fees and prices of X-Link and the PM software combined with the once one vendor upgrades his side will the other two products in the chain still work together and play nicely with one another. Just put it in AC in a way that works smoothly and easily with our AC, staight up.

Cut out the middlemen. Jon and AC will have much better, ultimate control, right infront of them and at least the majority of our dollars go to the real vendor of our first choice. Makes sense to me, "But hey what to do I know, I'm just the 800 pound gurillia in the room".
Be well...
Paul