ICANotes

Software for Mental Health Professionals

Opmerkingen: I have not encountered business issues with ICANotes. They have excellent customer service. They provide ongoing training as needed and they take time to make you feel confident using the software.

Pluspunten:

This software has highly impressive features such as creating mental health forms such as screening questionnaires, creating treatment plans with measurable objectives, and very thorough mental health assessments. The case notes are very easy to create and include a comprehensive mental health status examination. Also, you can link your treatment plan to your case notes so that you can address the progress made in treatment when writing a case note. It has a comprehensive list of all psychotropic medications.

Minpunten:

It is easy to integrate into your practice because it has all the necessary features for mental health providers, for example, CPT codes, assessment forms, consents, a fully integrated calendar with automatic reminders for the patients, and more importantly the capability to connect with a clearinghouse to submit electronic billing. It also has a patient portal. Very functional and extraordinarily helpful to create clinical notes. It has a telehealth platform too.

Using ICANotes for clinical practivce

Pluspunten:

ICANotes offers all the necessary features to document clinical notes and asessments and at the same time to be in compliance with regulatory mandates by insurance companies and the government.

Minpunten:

A dasboard to track documented and unducumented sessions that would allow to track any undocumented session. Also,

A horribly misrepresented product

Opmerkingen: Regrettably I was sold a bill of goods. ePrescribe functionality with DrFirst was only partial of what the standalone DrFirst product offers, the integration with my existing credit card software was promised but after integration was useless and I reverted back to my old system anyway. Customer service was always available and helpful, but at the end I was charged for 2 months of access for using the program for just 2 weeks. They would not refund the 2nd month of charges because they do not refund for cancelations as a policy.

Pluspunten:

- the customer service was within the product and relatively immediate in response. This is helpful as you will need them a lot.

Minpunten:

- ICANotes is noticeably slower relative to other EMRs and other computer programs. - There are places where you can get stuck and can't move. For example, creating a patient chart that does not have all the required information gives you an error message. - The actual look of ICANotes is grainy and unclear. It is a difficult program to look at throughout the day. - Scrolling is too fast. The windows of text are small and highlighting and scrolling through text within the text boxes is too rapid and you easily overshoot your selection. - copy/paste functionality is a deal breaker. There is an app-specific clipboard you must use as an intermediary. - the inability to easily refer to prior notes during a session. In the middle of a session, it is difficult to answer questions such as, "did we talk about sleep hygiene last time?" All the entries are kept together. - updating different areas of the medical chart can only happen through certain notes. I had one patient during a regular session tell me that she was recently diagnosed with a new medical condition. I had to start a new "complete assessment note" for that solitary piece of information for it to populate the medical history section, but then return to the progress note to finish out the session. - the active problem list is terribly difficult to manipulate and can only be done through cumbersome treatment plans. - there is a separate website just to upload documents to the chart. - no patient communication log

Finally, an EMR worth discovering!

Opmerkingen: I have been working within ICANotes for approximately 2 years, having transitioned from two different EMR systems. Overall, I have found ICANotes to afford a much broader spectrum of clinical flexibility for progress notes and new assessments. Care procedures, symptoms, medications, and historical data are all-inclusive and well organized for ease of use, which is vital for a fast-paced environment such as the one I work in. My particular job involves scribing for psychiatrists during back to back assessments for an acute psychiatric care hospital. This involves obtaining important historical data, current client concerns, daily medication changes, progress, and treatment plan options, all which have to be captured as quickly as possible as client is seated in assessment room. Having such an organized system helps me maintain an accurate and quick speed, which is crucial to my work. This is the first program I have used that caters to this need.

Pluspunten:

I appreciate the ability to build algorithms, to quicken my pace, and ICANotes affords me this ability. The various chart screens are easy to maneuver and contain clear and thorough guideline categories that require just a click of a button to incorporate into the notes. The medication areas are user-friendly and contain a broad selection of medications to choose from. At each chart front page, it is easy to see allergies and medical concerns in one glance, which promotes safety and easy recall to providers, when necessary.

Minpunten:

A primary concern has been connectivity continuity. Our office has had to switch to a web based launch, as opposed to remote log-in, due to considerable interruptions and stalls, which were were very time consuming and frustrating, given the pace that my work requires to be maintained. However, the connection options we have now are much improved, overall. For the purpose of creating a tidy note, I also would prefer that categories to be left-align in each section so that the headers would not appear to be floating in the middle of the page. This may seem like a small thing, but, when creating over 30 notes a day and spending time left-aligning each category of use, this can be a time hindrance.

ICANOTES REVIEW

Opmerkingen: Overall I would give ICANOTES high marks for ease of use and customizability .ICANOTES operates much faster than I expected even though the computing is done in the cloud. I had feared it would be like Allscripts prescribing system which is quirky and slow. I anticipate that using ICANOTES will allow me to go fully paperless within a year.

Pluspunten:

I have found it very easy to use and learn very quickly. I was able to complete almost all my notes during visits with patients by the second day of use. I also found that typing personalized information was actually easier than handwriting notes .As I see a fair number of Workmans Comp patients it insures legibility and makes for a more refined note which has to be submitted with claims. I have not yet used the customizable buttons yet (I've only been at this one week) but expect that using them will make my notes seem more like what I naturally write. I also like the ability to upload documents into patient charts. I had been exploring the possibility of moving to electronic records a number of years ago and kept coming back to ICANOTES. I had not pursued till now because I expected the learning curve to be steep and long. That has not been the case and I wish I had done this years go. Using DrFirst prescribing system with ICANOTES is a plus as it is integrated and quick.

Minpunten:

It was a little difficult to be able to upload patient data - not because of ICANOTES but because other systems do not setup data to enable conversion to excel or csv files (Therapist Helper, for example). I also found that prescribing systems do not share information either (Allscripts). I fortunately did have enough data from my scheduling program(Scheduleview) to get the baics put in. I was getting a little panicked at the thought of having 700 patients entered manually. The scheduling program in ICANOTES is a little underpowered as I would like to see it have the capacity to send out reminders which I understand is being investigated.