Advocate Physician Partners to subsidize eClinicalWorks EMRs for 2,600 docs

Oak Brook, Ill.-based Advocate Physician Partners, said to be the largest physician network in the Midwest, will recommend eClinicalWorks EMR and practice management software to 2,600 independent doctors as the result of a deal with the Westborough, Mass., vendor. Advocate Physician Partners, a venture between Advocate Health Care and 3,400 physicians, already uses the eClinical Works Clinical Integration Program to set, disseminate and manage best practices across the organization in 35 disease groups.

"Advocate Physician Partners is committed to clinical excellence and patient safety, and the use of an EMR by APP physician members is the next step in using technology to improve quality and performance," Dr. Lee Sacks, president of the physician organization, and CMO of Advocate Health Care, says in an eClinicalWorks press release.

An eClinicalWorks spokeswoman says the physician group will subsidize a portion of start-up costs on behalf of the physician members via a vendor credit payable on behalf of the doctors. This is not a health system's "donation" under the Stark and Medicare anti-kickback exemption.

Advocate Physician Partners has begun pilot implementations of the eClinicalWorks system and expects to have 1,200 physicians in 400 offices online by mid-2012, in time to earn the full $44,000-per-physician Medicare bonus under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, eClinicalWorks says.

For more:
- take a look at this eClinicalWorks press release

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