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Matthew T. Stanley, OD
​
Eye Care Associates of Manhattan
Manhattan, Kan.

Matthew Stanley, OD, a graduate of Kansas State University and The University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Optometry, cites diagnosis and treatment of disease, difficult contact lens fittings and dry eye treatment as his areas of special interest within optometry. In addition, he said, he’s also a tech nerd and “just super curious and interested” in any kind of new technology that will help him improve the operation of his practice.

“There’s something new every day that I either hear about on social media or from colleagues and others,” he said. “And what we want to be, number one, is as efficient as possible. This makes life easier.”

This tech interest has led him to explore and adopt the Uprise practice management system designed by VisionWeb. Uprise is a cloud-based solution designed to operate simply and provide “much more than practice management and Electronic Health Records (EHR)” functions, according to the company.

Stanley said that one of the factors that led to his use of Uprise is the fact that it integrates with other office systems. “We have all of these different pieces of equipment in the office that are really high-tech, and we’ve also got all of these different ways that we communicate with our patients, from social media, our website or integrated patient messaging software,” he said.

“Uprise was the best solution that merged all of this together for us, and that was able to put the last piece into the high-tech area, which is the documentation of the exam.”

Uprise has become the central practice management tool at Eye Care Associates, and it’s used for documenting findings, scheduling, submitting orders to suppliers and, among other functions, submitting claims, Stanley said. It also offers a strong patient education program via online video that Stanley said he has found to be an efficient and effective means of providing more in-depth information to patients about conditions and diagnoses.

By adding Uprise, Stanley said he has found “the last piece of the puzzle in terms of making my office really high-tech everywhere.” Previously, he said, the practice’s EHR was becoming out of date and was server-based. It worked fine, but “didn’t do great with all of the new pieces of equipment,” he said, noting that the system could make it challenging to go through an exam encounter.

With Uprise, there is no need for an in-office server, Stanley said. “With our previous software, my server was a $5,000 to $6,000 piece of equipment that I had to buy. The server had to be backed up and the data had to be taken off-site [daily]. I had to have an IT technician come in [and set something up].”

This meant, Stanley said, that he had to run the backup operations “at the end of every single business day … before I could go home.” Then he needed to take a copy of all the practice’s data offsite just in case the office suffered a power outage or any kind of natural disaster.

Among other important features of Uprise are: long-term user agreements are not required, and there are no annual fees, maintenance or training fees, or additional support costs, according to the company. Because Uprise is a cloud-based solution, the primary access requirement is a web browser. Office device integrations are added at no cost, the company said.