Ophthalmology EHR Buyer's Guide

This guide will help you answer three key questions which are crucial to selecting and implementing the best EHR system for your ophthalmology or optometry practice::

Which EHR features does your ophthalmology practice need?
How much does ophthalmology EHR cost?
Which eye-care EHR vendors should you consider?

Which EHR features does your ophthalmology practice need?

Requirements gathering is a crucial part of any EHR selection process.

Conducting this before you shortlist any vendors is a quick way to ensure “product bias” doesn’t creep into your decision making. To kickstart your requirements gathering we have outlined some common features for ophthalmology and optometry practices.

Core eye-care EHR features

Revenue cycle solutions
DICOM Imaging
ICD-10 support
Optical appointment scheduling
Ophthalmology templates and charting
E-prescribing functionality or integration

Advanced eye-care EHR features

Shipping integrations (e.g FedEx®, UPS®, WMS system)
Optical inventory management for frames, lenses etc.
Optical order management
IRIS Registry integration
Appointment analytics (time tracking, patient feedback)
Advanced reporting (e.g IOP reports, keratometry graphs)

How much does ophthalmology EHR cost?

Pricing for any specialty EHR systems is notoriously difficult to come by.

At a specialty-independent level, average EHR budgets (covering system price tag and implementation) run between $15,000 to $162,000.

Example pricing from optometry EHR vendors:

Revolution EHR = from $110 doctor / month ($5,988 one time setup fee)

Which eye-care EHR vendors should you consider?

When shortlisting EHR vendors it is important to outline selection criteria and use these in conjunction with your requirements analysis and budget to shortlist vendors. Key selection criteria include:

Affordability - is the system within budget?
Suitability - can the system cater for your requirements?
Culture - can you form a strong partnership with the vendor?
Efficacy - can the system deliver practical results?

With affordability and suitability covered by your requirements analysis and budget, culture and efficacy are often harder to assess. A quick shortcut is to consider specialty systems as likely cultural matches and leading providers as likely efficacy matches...

Specialty systems

EyeMD - EyeMD EMR software delivers DICOM imaging, ICD-10 support and mobile system access for ophthalmology and dub-specialties including retina, cornea, pediatrics and glaucoma.

Eye Care Leaders - Eye Care Leaders offers a suite of EHR and practice management applications including modules for revenue cycles, EHR, analytics, MIPS assurance, optical management and more. The company brought together a number of point solutions to build the EHR suite including MDOffice, Medflow, Key Medical, ioPracticeware, and EyeDoc.

Revolution EHR - Cloud-based Revolution EHR aims to cater for all optometry practice including single or multi-location, colleges and corporate practices. The company offer US-based customer support alongside the system.