When it comes to investing in a practice management (PM) system, practice managers want to see gains in efficiency and fatter bottom lines. Even if they choose a PM system that’s coupled with an electronic medical record (EMR), their primary goal is to boost their practices’ efficiency through more accurate and speedier billing, resulting in faster reimbursements from payers. To achieve these goals, a growing number of practices, large and small, are deinstalling their old practice management systems and replacing them with systems that include integrated EMRs.

While many of these PM systems are still quite healthy and have been kept updated, installing a truly integrated system from a single vendor appears to provide physicians with faster access to clinical data and better documentation, while ensuring that all the pertinent data necessary for billing of patients encounters is quickly entered into the billing cycle.

“I am a big believer in EMRs because you can achieve a lot in the middle segment of the practice management process by using EMRs,” says Bill Bysinger, director of Mercer Health Systems in Macon, Ga. “But I approach EMRs from a purely business perspective. How can I make not just the physician more productive, but the whole practice more productive? To really get a return on investment, a physician group must have this as an underlying goal.