Medications

NextGen Ambulatory’s home screen allows users to work faster and smoother. Without navigating to another screen, they can see past HPIs, exams, assessments and plans, as well as review medications, allergies and past medical history. In the patient encounter screen, medications are listed along with the number of entries on that list, and physicians can access that information by hovering over it. By clicking, users are taken to the medication module, where they can make new entries or edit existing ones.

EpicCare Ambulatory EMR monitors medication treatment by logging current and previous medications in the encounter screen. This log includes all medications prescribed across Epic providers and can be accessed via a pop-up window, reducing the need to click through different screens. While this is a useful tool, it retains all previous medications until a physician manually removes them.

Patient Information

NextGen Ambulatory EMR’s home screen lets users see past HPIs, exams, assessments and plans, as well as review medications, allergies and past medical history. NextGen Ambulatory also allows users to flip through charts with auto-grow grids. Physicians can utilize the patient information bar to access frequently-needed data such as age, date of birth, insurance carrier, address, etc. without interrupting their workflow. This solution allows users to hover their mouse over fields to view additional information without clicking away from their screen, a common issue for physicians. Within the patient encounter screen, users can also view patients’ primary pharmacy, rendering provider and primary care provider.

Compare NextGen and Epic EMR Against Your Needs

EpicCare Ambulatory EMR allows users to record all of their patient’s information, including medical history, medications, allergies, laboratory/radiology results and more. Physicians can access this information from the encounter page via a popup window. Patients can access their medical records via a range of mobile apps, encouraging them to participate actively in their care. When considering the differences between NextGen and Epic, this system is clunkier than NextGen’s and according to some users has a steeper learning curve. Additionally, if a patient’s medical history comes from a non-Epic provider, that information cannot be accessed via EMR integration.

SOAP Notes

SOAP notes are a medical evaluation method that attempts to standardize the encounter between patient and physician. The goal of SOAP notes is to improve communication between all channels of patient care and organize that communication so it can be easily revisited later.

Components

Subjective: Subjective observations such as symptoms as reported by a patient

Objective: Objective data such as measurable symptoms — e.g. fever, swelling, etc

Assessment: Diagnosis or possible diagnoses of a patient’s condition

Plan: Lays out provider’s plan for care such as tests, prescriptions, follow-up directions, etc.

NextGen Ambulatory allows users to save an entire SOAP note without losing the format, and they can reuse it for common findings using “Quick Note.” Users can also retain their preferences for procedures and exams using “Quick Saves.” If users navigate away from or finalize their SOAP note, it will remain in the same format when you return to it, speeding up the learning curve and streamlining template use.

Unlike many other EMRs, EpicCare Ambulatory EMR does not provide support for SOAP note. This is in part because of Epic’s proprietary data approach, which does not allow it to share data with non-Epic providers. Epic has its own encounter record of course, but it does not follow the standardized format of a SOAP note.

Custom Reports

Reporting was once the purview of strictly business intelligence tools, but that’s changing. As every form of software becomes more and more advanced (and, ironically, more similar to each other), they have begun to adopt elements of other types of software. One of the first elements to be added is often business intelligence/business analytics capabilities. EHRs/EMRs are no different in that way, and the ability to create custom reports can give healthcare providers new freedoms and insights. In the future of EMR, this capability will likely continue to gain importance.

Compare NextGen and Epic EMR Against Your Needs

NextGen Ambulatory’s InSight Reporting allows users to set practice benchmarks, monitor progress, and gain access to insightful and actionable comparative analytics on peers and payers in real time. This allows practices to identify pain points in their daily operations — long lobby waits, high rates of individual physician error, financial overpaying, etc. — and better address them.

Epic’s Epicenter offers a range of reports, both pre-built as well as query-based. Users can utilize Epic’s expansive databases to report on both clinical and financial data from multiple integrated Epic providers. Even users unfamiliar with other types of BI tools can make and understand these reports. This interconnectedness allows users to garner robust data sets and observe multi-practice trends in their reports.

Outstanding Lab Reports

When a patient needs laboratory work done, that work is often outsourced from specialty labs or other external sources. Your EMR has to be able to receive those lab results and incorporate them into a patient’s medical record. How well an EMR does this varies, and if the integration isn’t smooth, it means more data entry work for your office staff.

NextGen Ambulatory enables instant access to charts and lab results at any location. This instantaneous access without a paper chase allows continuous monitoring of a patient’s record. This means that physicians and office staff can act immediately upon new information with potentially life-saving results. Patients also benefit from this real-time access — they can see their results as soon as they’re in via a patient portal. They no longer have to wait days for their results to be processed and passed along.

EpicCare Ambulatory EMR doesn’t allow direct data sharing, so its process is slower. Epic users have to route diagnostic testing results through the system to the appropriate caregivers manually, often via paper trails. While it still gets the job done, this more cumbersome process adds to physician overburdening and increases the downtime for the entire care team waiting on crucial lab results.

Who Won?

While both tools are excellent — our analyst research put both in the top eight EMR solutions overall — there is a pretty clear winner when looking at Epic vs NextGen. Both offer the same features (with the exception of SOAP notes, which Epic foregoes completely), but how those features are delivered to end users makes all the difference. NextGen Healthcare is significantly more user-friendly than Epic and offers interoperability features that make it much easier to use with other systems. After comparing features, see how these two EMRs stack up in cost and compare the features of other EMR/EHR industry leaders. Now you should feel confident enough to find the perfect EMR for your practice.

Did our analysis do these two EMRs justice? Do you use one of these systems? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Compare NextGen and Epic EMR Against Your Needs

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