Acupuncture

Day-to-Day Users
1

aperezcrespo wrote on Thursday, March 01, 2007:

Hi guys
  Does anyone know if and how OpenEMR might work for acupuncturist?  Will it work just fine as is?

Thanks
Alfonso

2

andres_paglayan wrote on Thursday, March 01, 2007:

if you add a form for diagnosis,
including input for things like tongue, pulses,
and one for treatment where you can list all meridian points,
and the tipe of stimuli used,
then is perfect,

3

aperezcrespo wrote on Thursday, March 01, 2007:

Great and Thanks

4

tfinver wrote on Friday, March 02, 2007:

if you make such a form, would you be so kind as to share it with me?  so busy frantically trying to get my server set up and working that i cant worry about forms and such.

thanks Alfonso

Torin

5

aperezcrespo wrote on Friday, March 02, 2007:

Pending the Providers approval and if it is not too specific to his particular practice, I will submit it to the contributions folder.
Hopefully it will be a generic set of acupuncture forms.
FYI take a look in the contributed forms folder there’s alot in there.

Alfonso

6

Hello, have you used OPENEMR since you posted this? I’m an acupuncturist/herbalist looking into using it and would appreciate any comments about it!

7

hi @CFACU, you’ll love OpenEMR because it’s full of features and so customizable.

1 Like
8

Hello @CFACU!
We have been maintaining and supporting the extensively used OpenEMR at an Acupuncture Clinic in New Jersey since 2013. The Clinic has four practitioners now – three acupuncturists and a massage therapist plus supporting staff. They use a lot of the program features such as:

  • Calendar for scheduling,
  • Internal Messaging to communicate between the staff members and the practitioners;
  • Patient Visits and Encounter forms (including specifically created and customized for Acupuncture LBVs, CAMOS and included with the program Pain Map form);
  • Keeping and using the Patient’s medical data and scanned documents (medical history, references, test results, disclaimers etc) stored together in their accounts in the program. Both the encounter forms and the documents are the main components of a patient’s chart. As an acupuncturist you may also be interested to store and use easily retrieved patient’s tongue color pictures.
  • Billing Modules for patients, including electronic billing for their insurance. The appropriate acupuncture procedure codes (CPT-4 such as 97810 etc) and ICD-10 diagnostic codes set up in the system;
  • Inventory module for keeping track of the herbal products and supplements in the in-house storage;
  • Various reports including Appointment-Encounter, Financials etc.
    and much more.

It took some time to set up, learn and get used to the OpenEMR at first. But now after almost 5 years the program has become an essential part of the practice.

1 Like
9

Hi @alexvolin,
hmm, sounds very interesting. Could you elaborate more on the inventory and billing modules? I’m customizing OpenEMR for veterinary use with a Vcode system, did exam forms for different species, a dental chart and a form for keeping track of non-drug components such as A-Trac braces, collars, supplements, but got kind of stuck with the last one to get them to show up in billing (and insurance).
I guess that supplements and herbals also do not need prescription in the US situation, how did you do that?
R.

10

Hi @roland w,
I am sorry I missed your post. Yes, the supplements and herbals do not need prescription but they are also not covered by insurance in acupuncture. Our patients buy them for cash. And this exactly how OpenEMR works with it. You absolutely right that they do not show up in the insurance billing. Looks like the program filter it out in the billing module. There was a discussion about it in the old forum on Sourceforge. Please take a look:
https://sourceforge.net/p/openemr/discussion/202506/thread/b934fda0/
Alex

11

Hi @alexvolin,
thanks, I had a look there, it gave me new idea. For a handful of products that seems ok, but not for a large collection. Got everything to show up in billing, the screen gets very cluttered though with many products. Our patients, well the guardians of them also buy for cash. There are insurance plans for veterinary patients here, but most of them do not work with electronic claims, and if they do there is no such thing yet as a standard …sigh…
thanks for pointing me to the discussion. will continue with this, but customization does not seem to be the answer since all will be lost with an update
Roland

12

Hello @alexvolin
I have been in an acupuncture clinic for the past two years. I greatly appreciate your post.
I am planning a setup for our clinic using linux. I wanted to know if you are running an onsite or offsite instance. Are you strictly internal messaging or do you also use patient portal and notifications?
I greatly appreciate any input.
R