While many in the EHR industry have started moving beyond EHR implementation, it’s worth realizing that only 55% of physicians have adopted an electronic health record (EHR). Yes, that means that 45% of physicians are still working on selecting and adopting an EHR. Ok, it’s probably more like 40% of doctors are looking to implement an EHR. The other 5% will stick with their paper.
Plus, along with the 45% of doctors who don’t use EHR, there are a whole slew of existing EHR users that are selecting and implementing an EHR as well. For example, 2 days ago I was at my son’s cub scout event where an opthamologist friend of mine cornered me and asked me about how he should go about selecting an EHR for his practice. He had just decided to go out on his own and open his own opthamology practice. What a perfect time to select and implement an EHR.
With this in mind, today I came across this whitepaper by ADP AdvancedMD called A Thoughtful Approach to EHR Implementation. They provide a number of stats, charts, and graphs using data from the CDC about EHR satisfaction and EHR use. The most intriguing number to me was the number of physicians that reported accessing the patient chart remotely using their EHR. That’s an EHR benefit that I don’t see talked about very often.
The whitepaper also offered these 5 tips for a successful EHR Implementation:
- Stay committed to your goal, but flexible in your approach
- Don’t short-change your training opportunities
- Don’t underestimate the impact to your workflow
- To pilot or not to pilot
- Optimizing the EHR
A lot more could be said about each point and they cover each point in detail in the full whitepaper, but the first and third ones really stand out to me. EHR is a commitment, but requires some flexibility. The best way to have a failed EHR implementation is to not be committed or to be inflexible. Your workflow will be impacted, but if you take a thoughtful approach to your EHR implementation it can be impacted for good.
I would add at this level of ideas: Remember to manage your business along with your practice.
[…] though 90 percent of doctors are using an EMR at one point or another, only about 55 percent have actually adopted an EHR into their practice. It can be nerve-racking trying to find the perfect EHR. If you are finding yourself at that […]