AMA, AAFP team up on health IT tutorials

The American Medical Association (AMA) and a subsidiary of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) released three free online video tutorials to help practices improve their workflows with health information technology (HIT).

The videos, approximately 7 minutes in length each, from the AMA and TransforMED, a nonprofit subsidiary of the AAFP, cover e-prescribing, pre-visit planning, and point-of-care documentation.

The first tutorial explains the value of e-prescribing and the quality, safety, and efficiency of e-prescribing compared with handwritten prescriptions. In addition, the tutorial helps physicians identify opportunities for medication management improvement while enhancing doctor and patient convenience, according to a statement from the groups.

The pre-visit planning tutorial is intended to help practices establish a pre-visit planning structure that provides full patient information to the physician before the patient arrives. Providing this information in advance allows more time for patient-doctor interaction and shorter patient wait times, according to the groups.

The point-of-care documentation tutorial addresses decisions regarding the type of hardware used during an office visit. The tutorial also aims to help physician practices understand the type and format of information that should be entered during a visit.

The tutorials also include downloadable checklists, case studies, articles, and other references.

“Physician practices may need to redesign and reorganize their office routines so that they can successfully and efficiently adopt [H]IT,” said AMA President Peter W. Carmel, MD, in a statement. “The AMA created these tutorials to help physicians understand how to best implement new technologies, such as e-prescribing, into their practices.”

The activities have been certified for continuing medical education credit, according to the AMA. To view the tutorials, visit http://www.ama-cmeonline.com/health_it_workflow.

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