Optimizing Your New EHR System
Health care today almost demands a functional electronic health record (EHR):
a) Patients require electronic connectivity to their doctors (helpful with an EHR);
b) CMS requires quality data on every Medicare patient (easier if you have an EHR);
c) Due to reimbursement patterns that incorporate risk sharing, hospital leadership needs a better way to understand their processes at a detailed level to know where to focus improvement efforts (almost impossible without an EHR).
In light of these industry changes, few hospitals have chosen to stay on legacy systems and as a result at least one legacy system company is reportedly moving away from healthcare altogether (see article here).
The amount of change an EHR requires is never as simple as one would hope, nor is it as affordable as one would like. Our clients have requested support to address challenges while installing new EHRs that range from assistance resolving testing deficiencies, to difficulties adopting the new technology, to resolving infrastructure misalignment, and process flows that just do not work. Some of these challenges were identified during testing, some during go live, but most were found after implementation because critical thinking and decision-making either did not occur or was disjointed during build. The need for change did not appear until well after go live when unpredictable process breakdowns were identified and researched.
