Colin Banas, MD, MSHA, is Chief Medical Officer for DrFirst, the healthcare technology pioneer with award-winning solutions for telehealth, care collaboration, electronic prior authorization, and medication management. Colin was an Internal Medicine Hospitalist and the former Chief Medical Information Officer for VCU Health System in Richmond, VA prior to stepping down after 15 fulfilling years. He is proud to have testified before the U.S. Senate and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) on the topic of Health IT and the Meaningful Use Program and is a former Health IT Fellow for the ONC. His interests center on the role of big-data and analytics on patient outcomes and on novel forms of Clinical Decision Support, those that are outside of the realm of traditional rules and alerts, and include real-time dashboarding and intuitive usability designs. He also helped spearhead the VCU effort to participate in the Open Notes initiative, where patients have access to their clinical documentation in real time. In 2017 Dr. Banas was humbled to receive the HIMSS-AMDIS award for Physician Executive of the Year from his peers
It's time to embrace electronic prior authorization that, according to a 2021 AHIP study, has been found to reduce the mean time from PA request to decision by 69%. In addition, 71% of providers using ePA reported “faster time to patient care.”