User:James Neal Ferry

EPOWERdoc, Inc.

EPOWERdoc, Inc. is a company that produces healthcare software solutions and emergency department documentation systems. EPOWERdoc is a privately held company headquartered in Omaha, Neb. with offices in Jacksonville, Fla. and Cleveland, Ohio. EPOWERdoc was formed by a practicing emergency room physician to meet the unique needs to health care staff.

History

EPOWERdoc began as a provider of print-on-demand paper template emergency department documentation systems for physicians and nurses in 1999. The company was created by Wes Grigsby, MD, FACEP, the Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Creighton University Medical Center (CUMC) in Omaha, Nebraska and former Vice President of Medical Affairs for CUMC. Dr. Grigsby is a practicing Emergency Physician and also serves as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for EPOWERdoc. The primary product line created by Dr. Grigsby includes the PhysicianDoc and NursingDoc  Emergency Department template documentation systems and EPOWERdoc is currently the second largest provider in this market segment.

Product Development

Since 2004, EPOWERdoc has continually and strategically added products that improve the way doctors and nurses manage medical records. Working with practicing Emergency Medicine doctors and nurses during product development ensures that products are accurate and realistically usable in real-time situations. In 2004 David Ernst, MD, FACEP, FAAEM joined the company as the Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Ernst brought more than 18 years of clinical experience in the practice of Emergency Medicine that included Flight Physician for Metro Life Flight Aeromedical Helicopter program in Cleveland Ohio, Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine for both the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Ohio University College of Medicine, and the practice of Emergency Medicine for Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky, Ohio.

One of Dr. David Ernst’s first initiatives in the company was to create a strategic partnership with The Sullivan Group (TSG), a Risk Management Company in Emergency Medicine, through a working relationship with its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President Dan Sullivan, MD, JD, FACEP. Dr. Dan Sullivan is a practicing Emergency Physician with a degree in Law and lectures on risk management in emergency medicine at professional conferences throughout the United States.

Dr. Ernst and Dr. Sullivan utilized data obtained from several published studies on Risk Management by The Sullivan Group (TSG) to create an intelligent medical record. The TSG PowerDoc Risk Management paper template system for Physicians was the result and contains built in evidence-based medical content for real time bedside clinical decision support during the documentation process.

Dr. Ernst and Dr. Grigsby then focused the efforts of the company on the creation of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) for the Emergency Department. After assembling a team of full time Emergency Medicine Physicians and Nurses and Healthcare Software programmers, they developed a full featured Emergency Department Information System or EDIS. The design focus of the resulting EDIS, EMRdoc, was to alleviate much of the issues with slowed workflow resulting from the other Emergency Department EMR’s. EPOWERdoc accomplished this by using a number of Patent Pending migration tools and proprietary medical content and Template layout design.

In addition to the creation of a computerized physician and nursing patient record, the EMRDoc EDIS (Emergency Department EMR’s) contains modules for Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE), Tracking Board for patient flow, Reporting Engine for administrative management, Discharge Module for discharge instructions and follow-up, and an electronic prescription (eRx) generation module, EPOWERx. EPOWERdoc has interfaced with all of the major hospital wide Health Information Systems (HIS) to allow data integration and flow.

EPOWERdoc has further diversified its product line to include providing medical content and a template build service for other vendor EDIS. In addition, EPOWERdoc has introduced an Electronic Prescription Module, EPOWERx, that provides a standalone electronic prescription solution or integrated solution with the EDIS. In 2010 EPOWERdoc introduced an EMR for correctional medicine, MedCorrect EMR, that provides the capacity for the creation of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for all aspects of inmate healthcare. This corrections EMR follows the same design principles as the other EPOWERdoc solutions of putting clinician workflow as the foundation to avoid inefficiencies and safety issues. The MedCorrect EMR provides nursing and physician documentation but also contains tools for inmate clinic scheduling, CPOE, nursing task monitoring, an electronic medication administration record (eMAR), a Health Monitor for preventive medical care, and over 150 templates for acute conditions presenting to the Sick Clinic.

ARRA Compliance

One of EPOWERdoc’s main focuses is to maintain compliance with the interoperability standards required by the Federal Government’s American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) Healthcare Information Technology initiative and to continue to have its software solutions integrated with all of the major Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) for continuity of data flow. Having all of its products Certified for Meaningful Use under the ARRA is one of EPOWERdocs’s continual objectives.