The vendor required to provide electronic health record (EHR) system that includes tools to manage patient care, billing, communication, and optical inventory.
electronic medical record system must include patient communication tools, inventory management for retail goods, appointment scheduling, and revenue cycle management.
- The EHR must also enhance the quality of both primary and specialty eye care, support our teaching mission, and streamline clinical operations — all while reducing cognitive burden and preparing us for future integration with diagnostic technologies and artificial intelligence .
- Core system capabilities and functionality
• Give detailed explanation of the system’s core features
• The speed of the system and how it relates to its peers
• Provide a detailed description of the ease of imaging and picture archiving and communication system (PACS) integration in the her
• Integration capabilities with any diagnostic devices, such as oct, visual field machines, fundus cameras, etc.
• Explain if there are customizable clinical workflows and templates (ex., subspecialty care) and the ability to auto populate data fields
• Explain online appointment capability, its patient-friendly attributes, customization capabilities, and if inherent to the system or requires integration with a third party
• The ability to track, manage, and follow up on patient referrals to and from internal (within the college) and external (outside the college) providers
• Explain any automated referral documentation
• Integration capabilities with external EHRs to send and receive referral information
• Explain any integration with online sales capability and whether it is inherent to the system or via a third party
• Explain ERX capability and effective pricing model for an academic setting where not all providers are full-time equivalents in clinical care
• Explain the patient demographics and practice management fields available for collection, including information about vision and medical insurance.
• The appointment scheduling capability, which allows patient appointments to be identified with individual faculty and students.
• The capability for the patient to receive and send forms before their appointment, or by using a kiosk or portable device at the time of the appointment.
• Explain any automated messaging for appointment reminders, test results, prescription readiness, and patient recall capability
• Patient portals capabilities for secure communication and access to records
• HIPAA-compliant secure messaging capability between staff, patients, and external providers
• Patient recall capability
• Any built-in patient education tools
• Explain if you currently offer telehealth service capabilities, and if so, are they built into your existing platform or provided through a 3rd party solution
• Expound on any built-in or add-on patient communication tools not already described
- Billing and claims management:
• Give an overview of revenue cycle management features, commenting specifically on those features related to eye care
• Provide automated insurance verification (both vision and medical) capabilities
• Present automated billing and coding for optometry procedures; describe accuracy
• Must notify the staff when claims are rejected.
• The system produces a patient receipt at the time of service indicating what is due from the patient, what was received, and what is being submitted to insurance.
• Explain if the system provides an up-to-date and accurate listing of any outstanding balances or credits and produces clear reports exportable to excel of payments, write-offs, payments pending, and insurance and patient responsibility.
• Automated billing and claims submission, denial, and tracking capability for both vision and medical insurance
- Security, compliance, interoperability and operations:
• The ability to integrate with third-party systems (diagnostic lab providers, imaging centers, pharmacies)
• Detail hl7, FHIR, and other standard protocols used
• Ability to migrate and map data from our existing systems.
• Transfer and remove phi at the end of your contract if we move to another system.
• Explain custom application programming interfaces (APIS) capabilities for future integrations
• Explain, vendor support for integration setup and testing
• The system conforms with common data standards and health information exchange requirements related to common data models, storage, harmonization, connection.
• Product is designed to meet interoperable data model standards to facilitate communication with peer institutions (e.g., uh college of medicine and other external partners)
• Give product compatibility with the academic and research mission and multi-campus strategies
• Capability to be scalable to surgical centers and ambulatory settings
• Detail compatibility with a third-party vendor called promptly, which performs online appointment scheduling, patient reminders, and payment processing
• Explain how the product meets full HIPAA and HITECH act compliance
• Explain if data is encrypted at rest and in transit
• Describe user role-based access controls
• There capability for a role-based permission system for clinical and administrative users
• Explain it has capability for audit trails for tracking access and changes to records
• The product meets uh institutional it security standards
• Post-implementation software maintenance updates and security
• Process for identification and notification of system security threats, vulnerabilities, and software updates.
• Breach notification procedures that you follow with HIPAA-covered entities, including response timelines and escalation procedures
• Phi will be stored and processed, depending on the system configuration or services purchased (e.g., cloud or on-premises server)
• Clearly identify available support for customization and local control over system updates
• business continuity and disaster recovery support features and capabilities.
- Data, research, reporting, analytics and ai integration:
• Explain customizable, extensive financial, clinical productivity, quality, and operational reports that are available and exportable formats supported
• Explain if reports can be pushed at regular intervals rather than having to manually query the reports each time
• Outline query-based (e.g., SQL, LLM, etc.) data access and export capabilities
• Support for longitudinal patient data queries
• The ability to anonymize and aggregate data for reporting by site, facility, service, or across multiple facility locations
• Provide what support exists for building custom dashboards and reports
• Explain integration capabilities with data lakes and institutional analytics platforms
• Compliance report capabilities for meaningful use
• Explain any clinical data research access capabilities that enable customizable data access to maintain compliance standards (e.g., identify potential or current research subjects from past visits or upcoming visits)
• Present information about any ai-powered decision support tools for clinical workflows (suggestions for diagnosis, treatments)
• Predictive analytic capabilities for patient outcomes
• Explain automated charting and notes generation capabilities based on voice or text inputs
• Available ai-powered patient engagement tools (e.g., virtual assistants for answering basic patient queries)
• The ability to mark patients as research subjects exist
• Patient outcome reports are available and if additional costs to query
- Inventory management:
• Explain real-time inventory level updates (optical lenses, frames, contact lenses, etc.)
• Automated ordering capabilities for ordering contact lenses through distributors (ex. abb)
• Integration capabilities with external vendors/distributors/labs to order optical frames and optical lenses
- User experience, training and support:
• Present what comprehensive initial and ongoing staff training (virtual and in-person) is offered
• Provides structured training and onboarding resources
• Implementation plan includes phased rollout and support
• Implementation plan includes internal champions and super-users for support
• The post-implementation review and improvement process
• Explain if 24/7 customer support is available and how (phone, email, live chat)
• Regular system updates occur and detail any feature enhancements (detail frequency and expected monthly downtime) planned
• Capability and ease of use for customizable dashboards and standard and specialty provider care templates for optometry-specific workflows
• Page views in the system allow for simultaneous image review along with examination details
• The aspects of the software that are duplicated in a test environment so that anticipated changes can be tested before implementation.
• A student version of the EHR should be available for teaching purposes.
• Give mobile and tablet compatibility (iOS, android)
- Cost breakdown:
• Provide the software licensing fees (per user or site-wide)
• Provide implementation and customization costs
• Provide integration costs
• provide training costs (initial and ongoing)
• Provide support and maintenance fees
• Provide any additional costs (AI modules, advanced reporting features, installation of new releases, etc.)
• Termination clause
• Provide cloud and server-based EHR service academic pricing for 3 years with 7 optional 1-year extensions detailing the estimated required operational costs per year.
- Contract Period/Term: 3 years
- Pre-Proposal Meeting Date: January 7, 2026
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: January 9, 2026
