Physicians Practice - September 2008 - (Page 73) TECHNOLOGY EMR SUCCESS IN 8 EASY STEPS BY KEN TERRY YOUR IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS SOLVED OK, the truck rolls up to your office, and you take delivery of your new EMR system. What do you do with it? Of course, the process isn’t anything like this. But a surprising number of physicians make a big investment in an EMR without thinking much about how they’re going to implement it. This careless approach can be fatal, even to a thriving practice. Your financial and professional future may depend on how you prepare for this crucial step and carry it out. So you better think it through upfront and know what you’re going to do when the “go-live” date arrives. Here’s a primer on some of the most important areas you need to address to implement your EMR successfully. 1. Be committed. Many a practice has purchased an EMR because IN SUMMARY Successful implementation of an EMR depends on commitment, preparation, proper training, and a willingness to change. To use an EMR effectively, you have to be ready to re-engineer your processes to take maximum advantage of its features. • Make sure all the clinicians are committed to an EMR conversion before pursuing one. before the go-live date, so that clinical data will be in place before you start documenting patient visits on the EMR. management system works properly before tackling the EMR. the same EMR templates. • Have staff enter key patient data • Make sure your new practice • Get your colleagues to agree to use WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM one or two physicians thought it was a great idea. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the other clinicians are on board. If some of them aren’t, the group is wasting its money, because the implementation will fail or limp along. “The biggest cause of abandonment of EMRs is that docs start with every 10th patient, and they start to see it’s going to take them more time, and they’re not willing to do it,” says Ron Rosenberg, a health IT consultant in Sausalito, Calif. “Or they’re willing to do it in a modified way, by dictating or by having paper notes scanned in and having their assistant enter codes.” To ensure that every physician uses the EMR properly, it’s essential to have a champion who brings everyone else along. “You have to be able to build consensus and buy- in, otherwise you don’t get there,” notes family physician Christopher Crow, who leads an eight-doctor family practice in Plano, Texas, that implemented a GE Centricity EMR a few years ago. Staff members must also be involved in implementation, Crow adds, “because all these work flows involve multiple people. You have to decide how to make decisions as a clinic.” 2. Be prepared. Assuming you’re committed, solid preparation for the “go-live” on your EMR is the single-biggest determinant of success. That means analyzing your work flow, deciding how to adapt it to the EMR, customizing the system to your needs, entering key data, setting up the hardware, hiring technical support, and arranging for lab interfaces. SEPTEMBER 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 73 http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM
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