The numbers don't lie. When it comes to patient recall success among PCC practices, there is a lot of room for improvement, says PCC's Chip Hart.

Hart's class on recall strategies at this year's UC was an eye-opener for many, particularly those who may not keep close tabs on their practice's well visit coverage using practice management tools such as Partner's Practice Vitals Dashboard.

In referencing a July snapshot of this measure among PCC practices, Hart pointed out that the median well visit coverage rate for patients ages 7-11 is 55%. 

"That means 45 percent of these kids in a typical PCC practice are not coming in for well visits, which is somewhat horrifying, given that PCC clients are, on average, the better performing practices in the country and have the sophisticated tools to recall children," Hart said this week. "Any practice having a tough time keeping a full appointment book should look at their well visit coverage."

Last month, we interviewed Brandon Betancourt, practice administrator at Salud Pediatrics, about Salud's switch to PCC's Partner practice management system. And while that story captured the highlights of the decision-making process, Brandon has since written a blog that digs deeper into whys and hows:

Why We Selected Physician's Computer Company as Our New Practice Management Vendor

We decided to switch our practice management system. We selected Physician’s Computer Company as our new vendor.

I’ve been a fan of PCC since I learned about them and I’ve always said that had we known about them before buying all of our IT, we would of gone with them. But we had made a huge investment in IT before learning about PCC and it didn’t make sense to move things over back then. We were already too vested in our infrastructure to make a drastic transition like that. But as usual, things change and we felt it was time to make the move.

The clinicians at St. Louis Pediatric Practitioners are seeing a lot more patients these days, and they say implementing the automated appointment reminders in the latest version of PCC's Partner practice management system has made all the difference.

Tennessee pediatrician Dr. Debra Selby tells us charting is easier because of the newest growth charting improvements in PCC EHR.

Since mid-2009, PCC EHR has been beefed up with more than 300 elements of functionality, from major features, such as new and improved growth charts, to user-friendly tweaks, such as the addition of a feature that allows clinicians to create their own medical summary components.

A few months ago, PCC spread the word about the Toolkit for the Follow-up Care of the Premature Infant - a valuable new resource developed by pediatric specialists and other health professionals in collaboration with MedImmune and the National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ).

And in recognizing the shortage of good preemie protocols in the EHR world, PCC recently jumped at the opportunity to integrate into PCC EHR the clinical assessment tools offered in the Toolkit.   

The clinicians at St. Louis Pediatric Practitioners are seeing a lot more patients these days, and they say implementing the automated appointment reminders in Partner 6.9 has made all the difference.

The two-physician practice in St. Louis, MO, is beta testing the new feature, which will roll out as part of the 6.9 general release on Aug. 7.

Just as we were dotting the "I's" and crossing the "t's" on Monday's (7/23) social media story, PCC received yet more proof that social media can be used as an excellent way to communicate what's happening in the world of pediatric healthcare.

In its 2011 clinical report on “The Impact of Social Media Use on Children, Adolescents and Families,” the AAP discusses the omnipresence of social media in the world of today's youth and stresses a parent's need to understand these technologies so they can relate to their child's online world and comfortably parent within it.

Amid the conversation, U.S. pediatricians are also beginning to focus on how to best use social media in their own world. An increasing number of physicians have begun to take ownership of social media as a relatively easy, cost-effective way to foster relationships with patients, enhance their practices' online presence and communicate their ideas as healthcare providers.

PCC's Chip Hart continued the dialogue at last week's PCC Users' Conference in Florida, when he discussed how pediatricians can build a positive online presence for their practice and prevent against the pitfalls associated with broadcasting their message on the web.

Here’s how you can use online patient reviews to boost your ranking in Google Places and thus the local organic search engine results, according to a February 2012 blog post at KevinMD.com.

What are the chances of two old high school buddies from rural Vermont running into each other at a pediatrician's office six states and a Mason Dixon line away?

Before June 28, PCC's Shawn Carroll would probably have said slim to none.

Then along came June 28 and a chance encounter with a girl who sat with him in all the same classes in the late 1980's and early 90's, back when George (H.W.) Bush was president and acid-wash jeans were hot.

PCC officially welcomed Salud Pediatrics as one of its newest practices in June, but the two-physician office in Chicago had been eyeing PCC as its practice management and EHR systems vendor of choice long before that.

“We've always said had we discovered PCC eight years ago, we would have gone with you guys,” Salud's practice manager Brandon Betancourt told us late last month. “We recently re-evaluated where we were and what tools we'd need to take us where we think we needed to go, and while we're okay with what we have in place now, we know we could do better with PCC.”