by Jason Hale, CCDS, PaceMate Co-Founder and Vice President of Commercial Excellence
Every day, the healthcare industry struggles with the use of legacy systems and siloed, inaccessible data. APIs—application programming interfaces—help information systems communicate and transfer data between each other and can dramatically improve the digital healthcare experience.
PaceMate’s established partnerships with premier EHR vendors have given us marketplace access to quickly build bi-directional integrations via API that provide automatic exchange of patient-centric data on every report in real-time. The result is a best-in-class experience for cardiology practices, hospital systems, and device clinics, with multiple unique cardiac data management advantages.
APIs are specific information highways developed by EHR vendors to give healthcare organizations a solution to data fragmentation. APIs allow systems and data to talk to one another automatically, providing the doctor and staff with a seamless experience by automatically exchanging the most valuable data between multiple software environments.
Many of PaceMate’s competitors lack existing technology on the back end to connect with new technologies through API. Most also depend on outsiders to maintain connections, contracting with fourth-party companies to build the integration.
By contrast, PaceMate has been vetted thoroughly by the nation’s largest EHR vendors and now partners directly with these networks to utilize APIs for improved clinical accuracy, better user experience, reduction of medical errors, and overall enhanced patient care.
Medications: With medications list APIs, the PaceMate platform automatically receives an updated list of each patient’s medications, dosages, and date of the last prescription. Within the PaceMate system, we have built proprietary algorithms that automatically adjust the alert severity based on certain medications the patient may or may not be prescribed.
This automation provides peace of mind for staff and doctors: They know that despite the large number of reports waiting to be assessed, the PaceMate dashboard clearly flags the most important alerts so that they appear at the top of the list. In the age of remote patients and remote doctors, this API is extremely valuable.
ICD-10 Diagnosis Codes: ICD-10 codes are used by doctors and practices to classify and code all diagnoses, symptoms, and procedures. Upon every report creation in PaceMate, APIs from the EHR perform a “handshake”—updating relevant ICD-10 codes and providing clinicians and doctors with the most up-to-date diagnoses for optimal care of the patient. Accurate and current ICD-10 codes are also imperative for efficient and compliant billing claims creation—another automated feature of the PaceMate platform.
Last/Next Office Visits: PaceMate’s EHR partnerships have given us access to APIs that exchange the most recent and next scheduled office visit dates, as well as notes from the last in-office experience. Instead of the doctor and clinicians having to search the EHR for this data, they have immediate access to it in PaceMate, providing them with valuable and accurate insight.
Billing Automation: Through API-enabled billing automation, PaceMate has saved our customers thousands of hours of manual billing labor. Our billing rules engine determines whether a report is billable, and the automation process begins: Upon electronic signature by the doctor, the billable report is documented in the EHR, the claim is prepared, and the bill is electronically sent to the payer. Our unique access to these APIs enables a seamless, cost-saving billing process that increases reimbursement capture for our customers.
Demographics: With PaceMate, patient demographic data entry can be reduced by up to 90%. When new patients enter the PaceMate platform, an API verifies that the patient’s EHR demographic data matches the data coming in from the medical device. Mismatches are auto-identified and flagged by PaceMate for reconciliation by the practice.
Exchanging secure data via application programming interface (API) technology is the future of healthcare. At PaceMate we use our unique marketplace partnerships and proprietary APIs to connect providers with the most important, patient-centric data in the EHR.