Pamela Lewis Dolan writes in American Medical News on alternatives in EMR purchasing that includes buying lightweight systems before you move to a full EMR system to ease in adoption.
As the article explains from the vantage point of the American Medical Association, physicians should ease into technology utilization. Why? Like any other business, introducing change to employees or to patients can be tricky and difficult, it takes time to adopt new processes that stem from the use of these new systems and in some areas the technology chosen may not fit as well as good old fashioned paper. Haven’t heard this yet from an EMR vendor, you likely won’t, as many of the sales people are pushing stories of how their clients have utilized the product and have proven that it works. Easy to do when you only talk about 10% of your clients, when in reality many users of the software still dictate their notes or use medication forms to prescribe meds, instead of the electronic prescribing tool that they bought from the EMR.
In the end, each practice has to make the shift to technology, just as each bank now offers ATM machines and every hotel offers credit card payment. There was a time when those two examples were not true, but today they are standard, just as EMR’s will be standard in the medical facility of the future. But how do you get there? Slowly, review solutions that allow you to work your business the way that you want to, don’t become a slave to a technology solution that makes you fit it, make the solution fit you. Once you choose the solution go slowly with the install, how do you do this? You choose a vendor that isn’t going to rush you through your installation so that they can move onto another prospect, ever trying to grow their stockholder’s profit margins. Find a vendor that will partner with you and not just their stockholder.
Train on certain aspects of the software that add value to you upfront, take the time to let your staff adopt those functions and then bring the vendor back in to train on other more advanced functions in 90-120 days. Continually introduce new functions and advances in the software instead of trying to teach your staff this whole solution in 60 days, it took them time to learn how to code and how to run a practice, just as it took the nurses and doctors time to learn how to practice medicine, technology takes time to adopt. As you walk through an implementation, instead of sprinting through it, you will find your staff and your patients reaching out to learn more and to adopt the technology deeper, this is where you can begin to drive real value back to your practice – whether its patient loyalty or quality of care or decreased operational costs, there is value in technology and EMR’s will be a great asset to your practice in the future.