There is no doubt that there will be a temporary productivity loss for the first few weeks after implementing any electronic record system.
Most physicians do not have the benefit of a health IT dream team supporting them.
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When educating a practice about the benefits of an EMR system it’s important to explain that productivity gains can usually be expected by the practice overall, but they’re not always present at the point of care.
As much as we’d like to see EMR’s enhance the efficiency of the point of care interaction, we haven’t reached this point with many of the EMR solutions currently available. This isn’t to say that it won’t happen in the future (I think it will), but at this time the change in behavior and workflow required to move physicians from paper systems to software solutions slows down the point of care interaction.
It is pretty clear however, that despite this apparent slowdown at the point of care, the efficiency of practices overall still improves in the majority of [correct] implementations due to a reduction in errors, faster payment cycles, and improved interdisciplinary communication.
Tannus Quatre
Vantage Clinical Solutions
The Healthcare Entrepreneur Blog
So, in answer to the phsician’s question, “How does it help me?”, your answer is, “It doesn’t, but the hospital is doing better!”
EMR has focused around billing. That’s because those with the money for such a system demand that it pay for itself. Not that it’s wrong, but that isn’t what physicians want at point of care. They want a one page view that can be used to track progress, without going to multiple tabs and boxes. In other words, they want simple. To date, I have not seen a single EMR that actually focuses on patient information as its reason for existence. That is the primary reason few physicians are eager to implement; because the systems out there do not meet their needs.
The heart of the issue is this: you must make the system fit the users. You do not (because you can not) make the users fit the system. If you fail to grasp this point, your implementation will fail. Just meet the needs of your users. Simple, right? But so hard to do…
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