The past couple weeks I’ve gotten a few emails and phone calls from my EMR vendor about having a few other college health clinics(doctor’s offices) come and take a look at our EMR implementation. I always go into these with a little bit of a mixed bag since I know that my EMR vendor would like me to speak positively to the client. In fact, in many ways it is in my best interest to help make my EMR vendor successful. The more offices my EMR vendor signs up, the more money they’ll have to stay around and continue to develop the product. However, I always wonder if the trade is really a fair one.
In the end, I love to have other people come and take a look at my EMR implementation. My wife just gave birth to our second child. You know I’m that proud daddy carrying around his little princess to show her off to all those around me. My EMR implementation isn’t that much different. It’s my little baby that I want to show off to other people.
Another part of the satisfaction of a site visit is that my EMR vendor is saying that our implementation of EMR is one of their premier implementations(yes, I know that is a run on sentence, but I’m too tired to fix it now). An EMR company wouldn’t send clients to a failed or shoddy implementation. I take real pride in that recognition.
However, the best part of site visits is the time to be able to connect and collaborate with other colleagues from around the country. It’s always fun to get a different perspective on what should be very similar processes. Plus, I just love interacting with people. We have two coming up in the next month. I’ll let you know how they go. If they don’t buy me lunch then you can guarantee they weren’t as good.
You speak of being somewhat ambivalent about hosting site visits for your EHR vendor’s potential clients. While you don’t want to trash your vendor, I think there is much that you could share that would benefit the prospective customer:
* Was the amount and quality of training sufficient?
* How did you go about minimizing productivity loss during implementation?
* Are interfaces with lab, PMS, etc. functioning to your expectations?
* Where there any unexpected costs?
* Name three things that would make the system better.
* What are the three best features of the EHR?
I could go on and on.
Elsie,
I agree completely that a visit to implemented sites is invaluable for a prospective customer. I’m ambivalent about the benefit that hosting a site visit does for me.
I wouldn’t want to trash my EMR vendor anyway. They are a partner in my clinic’s success. The more successful they are, the better product that will be produced for me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t be honest about their shortcomings.
Like I said, “In the end, I love to have people come and take a look at my EMR implementation.” However, sometimes I wonder what value I get for doing it. Not to mention the diminishing returns when I do site multiple site visits for my EMR vendor.
I think we need to have a set of questions ready for a vendor when we meet them. These could be
want to ask the following preliminary questions to a vendor
What is the cost per physician license?
Do you have any existing clients in our specialty?
Does your system come pre-loaded with templates for my specialty?
Is your company the developers of the software or is it re-branded from another vendor?
Is your system client/server based or ASP based?
Does your system include practice management software?
How many clients does your company have?
Is your system HL7 compliant?
How long has your company been in business?
Is your development done overseas?
Is support done overseas?
Is your software CCHIT certified? If not, why?
How often is the software updated?
hi.. this one’s for u prakash… i’ve gone thru quite a many sites and i’ve seen this question popped most of the time… i’m intrigued.. pls help me understand this…. how does it matter where/how the development/support takes place ? does the certification really matter when ur E.M.R does what it needs to do??
– congratulations on the birth of your 2nd baby
– I think it is a fair trade that you promote your vendor in order to get updates and improved quality of product.
– they wouldn’t send it to an unreliable implementation unless they didn’t care about their own reputation to their own networking contacts.
At the suggestion of my vendor I went onsite and am very glad that I did. We were abel to see the application in practice and asked numerous questions.
Having had such a positive experience I am ver happy to host onsite viewings of Sigmund Software at my practice. I agree it allows me to interface with professionals from across the country.