By B.C. Manion
As surgery centers and medical practices make the conversion from paper records to electronic medical records (EMRs), a Wesley Chapel company offers a service that combines both technical and medical expertise.
The company, Anaseed, gets its name from the word “Ana” which means bringing together information and “seed,” representing the start of new growth, said James Johnson, chief information officer for the company.
Two couples with deep roots in Wesley Chapel led the company that began operating last fall.
James Johnson is married to Vonnie Johnson, the company president. She is a former surgical assistant and has front-office medical experience, too.
The other couple is Diane Levin and her husband, Dr. Stephen Levin.
Diane is a registered nurse with many years of experience in the emergency room, as well as experience in implementing electronic medical records at University Community Hospital on Fletcher Avenue. Her husband, who has a private practice, is Anaseed’s consulting physician.
Anaseed provides health information technology solutions — including hardware and software, but also brings its wealth of medical knowledge to the table, said James Johnson, who is certified in health information technology.
The company uses Dell hardware and a Microsoft EMR program called gloStream.
“We are the only EMR on the market that is Microsoft-based,” James Johnson said, and Anaseed is the Central and North Florida platinum vendor of the software.
Offices that know how to use Microsoft will have little trouble making the transition to the new system, James Johnson said.
The company also offers a service called Practice Project Management that involves observing the current routine at a surgery center or medical office — and helping that team convert to a new system that makes sense for their operation.
The system can be customized for any size office, Vonnie Johnson said.
“That’s the beauty of our business model and our flagship product. It has the capability to be customized in any size environment,” Diane Levin said.
“We talk their talk. We know where the offices are coming from and why they are not using the EMRs the way they should be used,” Diane Levin said. “They’re not using them at all, or they’re only using parts of them, or they’re not tapping into all that the EMR can offer.”
They also talk with the doctors to learn their sources of frustrations and offer solutions to address them, Vonnie Johnson said.
The system they sell can be used in a wide range of environments, Vonnie Johnson said.
“That’s the beauty of our business model and our flagship product. It has the capability to be customized in any size environment,” Diane Levin said.
Because of their technical and medical expertise, the company is able to get the systems up and running more quickly — minimizing disruptions to medical offices and enabling the company to compete favorably in term of price, James Johnson said.
Besides helping physicians’ offices to become more efficient, the electronic records also enable information about patients to be shared with other care providers.
That’s extremely important when an unconscious patient is brought into the emergency room, Diane Levin said. Medical personnel will be able to see what kind of prescriptions the patient is using, will know if the patient has any allergies and will know, for instance, if the patient has any kind of metal implant. Patients who have metal implants can’t have MRIs, she explained.
While information can be shared, it also is protected, James Johnson said. The systems comply with federal health privacy laws, he noted.
“Everyone is very concerned about making sure that their information doesn’t get shared with the wrong people. Every piece of what Anaseed does, going from hardware, to going with Internet connectivity with firewalls, our EMR is all HIPAA-compliant (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act),” he said.
The company presently has 10 employees, serving an area that’s within a four-hour radius of Wesley Chapel.
The founders think there is tremendous growth potential in their field, and ultimately they envision having numerous satellite locations operating on the same premise as their Wesley Chapel location.
Regardless of how large the company becomes, however, they plan to keep its headquarters in Wesley Chapel.
“This is our home. We’re very happy to bring this high-tech industry to the Wesley Chapel area,” James Johnson said.
