Visual Practice XP Edition

Ontario Hospital Subsidy Program
The Visual Practice™ Ontario Hospital Subsidy Program (OHSP) is an initiative to enable Ontario hospitals to implement Visual Practice for their staff physicians with installation support provided through a hospital's Information Systems department. The OHS Program enables qualified hospitals to obtain licensed copies of Visual Practice which can be installed by hospital information systems staff with application support provided by ACSL. OHS subsidized hospitals can subscribe to a complete practice management package on a per physician subscription basis. OHS subsidy subscription fees are substantially lower than normal Visual Practice package, by enabling hospitals to leverage their existing Information Services technology investments to support the technical installation of Visual Practice within their facility.

Qualifications for OHSP
Ontario Hospitals who wish to take advantage of the OHS Program must meet the following criteria:
1. Membership in the Ontario Hospital Association,
2. The physician for which the program is being acquired must be staff, or, must spend at least 70% of his/her patient time physically at the hospital,
3. The physician's computer on which the program is installed, must be physically accessible by hospital IS staff,
4. Hospital must have a hospital IS (information services) department with at least one MSCE on staff, tasked with installing Visual Practice
5. Hospital IS department must have access to the Visual Practice OHSP website, to access the technical support toolset.

The OHS Program
The OHS Program is designed to recognize and use the hospital's existing investment in hardware, software, networks and staff. Since hospitals typically have an information services infrastructure (IS staff initially install the computers, operating systems, and networks) hospitals don't need the typical setup and maintenance services that non-hospital physicians require. Also, MSCE certified IS staff are a technically qualified to perform much of the installation and occasional maintenance that Visual Practice needs. These factors enable ACSL to subsidize the OHSP Package, enabling hospitals to acquire Visual Practice for their physicians at a significantly lower cost than having physicians purchase and install their own billing and practice management software.

Why use the OHS Program?
We have found that a large portion of our customer base that work out of hospitals are already having their hospitals cover their billing software costs! Also, many underserviced hospitals are trying to attract physicians, and are doing so by offering incentives such as turnkey practices, attractive office space leases and other inducements - the OHS Program can help hospitals offering incentives, by offering Visual Practice to them. The OHS Program enables hospitals to acquire the software for a fraction of what it would normally cost the physician.

Visual Practice is designed for the 32-bit Microsoft Windows (Windows NT, Windows 2000 & Windows XP are Visual Practice certified operating systems) environment that most hospitals have standardized to for their PC technology component. Also most companies supplying billing software are not IS department friendly. Our experience has shown us that hospital IS departments avoid supporting billing programs simply because of the sheer number of them, and because the programs and companies that create and support them don't co-exist well in the mixed technology hospital support environment. Standardizing on Visual Practice through the OHS Program eliminates this problem.

The OHS Program solves these issues. Hospital IS staff under the OHS Program have direct access to senior technical support staff, while physician staff have access to the standard technical support team. This ensures users get answers to their daily questions without bombarding the hospital helpdesk with Visual Practice calls, and, it ensures that if there is a technical issue that is escalated, hospital IS staff have access to our senior technical support staff.

OHSP Package
The OHSP Package consists of the following Visual Practice modules:
- Multi-User File Server Database License
- Patient Registration Module License
- OHIP Billing Module License
- Booking & Scheduling License
- VPL & QuickBill License
- Direct Dial EDT License
- OHIP Billing Provider License
- 1 Year Program Updates
- 4 Hours of Phone based Technical Support (more is available if you run out)

With the OHS Program, the retail cost of Visual Practice is subsidized by ACSL. For the hospital, there are no licensing fees for the OHSP Package. The OHSP Package is supported via the software subscription program at a flat fee of $75 per physician, per month. There are no additional fees for any components of the OHSP Package. This subsidy, based on the retail value of the OHSP components worth well over $2500 per physician.

The OHSP Package is a hospital budget-conscious solution, leveraging existing resources to better solve your physician's practice management and OHIP Billing challenges.

To apply for the OHS Program, contact or phone at 416-745-2880 x106.