As the world becomes increasingly digital-oriented, companies within the healthcare industry have had to make significant adjustments to ease the transition. For example, more and more healthcare organizations have adopted electronic health records (EHRs) to make record-keeping more efficient.
When companies make the switch from paper records to EHRs, physicians have to learn how to properly use these systems and optimize the company’s investment in the technology. While EHRs offer many benefits, some healthcare organizations are reluctant to adopt them because of this learning curve.
However, if your hospital or clinic follows the right steps, adjusting to a new EHR system can be a seamless process.
Studies Show Physicians Need Better EHR Training
A recent analysis published in the Applied Clinical Informatics journal revealed the chief cause of physicians’ dissatisfaction with EHR tools: lack of training. If healthcare organizations offered high–quality education opportunities to their clinical employees, many of the pitfalls of EHRs could be avoided.
It’s also important to recognize that not all EHRs are equal. Some require more training than others, especially if the system can’t be easily adapted. By using customizable systems like NextGen EHR, healthcare organizations can make training easier and more intuitive. With proper optimization, this EHR system can significantly improve an organization’s healthcare services. The benefits include:
- Having accurate, up-to-date, and complete information about patients at the point of care,
- Securely sharing electronic information with patients and other physicians,
- Quicker access to patient records for more coordinated, efficient care,
- Safer, more reliable prescribing,
- Decreased medical errors and safer care,
- Improved productivity and work-life balance for employees,
- Improved doctor-patient interaction and communication, and
- Legible, complete documentation that makes coding and billing more efficient.
How to Familiarize Yourself with Your EHR System
- Understanding the Basics
An electronic health record is basically a digital version of a paper chart. Instead of thick physical folders, an EHR software solution houses all of your organization’s digital files and provides an overview of patient care. Most EHR software has the ability to:
- Identify and maintain patient records
- Manage patient demographics
- Manage medication lists
- Manage problem lists
- Capture external clinical documents
- Manage patient history
- Manage clinical documents and notes
- Manage guidelines, protocols, and patient-specific care plans
- Present care plans, guidelines, and protocols
- Generate and record patient-specific instructions
- Work Through the Transition as a Team
Before implementing an EHR system, you need a reliable team to help the process run as smoothly as possible. This team should include staff members like nurses, medical assistants, physicians, and administrative staff.
A lead superuser, project manager, and lead physician are three essential roles to consider while building your team. The selected team of staff members will help the process by teaching other colleagues EHR skills. Team members can also serve as messengers and help identify challenges along the way.
Once you have a leadership team put together, you can start the training process. Successful training includes elements like office training sessions that allow all physicians and staff a chance to interact with the new EHR.
- Trial and Error
Practice administrators should use information such as click, motion, and time-in-screen data to measure and improve task time and EHR activity patterns. This will provide physicians and staff with basic skills before full implementation of the system.
Also, it can be challenging for users to fully understand the system until they’re able to use the program. Once users succeed in the trial and error period, additional training can be introduced to improve skills, learn time-saving tricks, and get more comfortable with the program.
- Hire a Professional Trainer
During the training stage, schedule team member meetings with a professional EHR trainer to cover any issues and questions that arise. An EHR trainer can help you to:
- Develop or customize data entry templates
- Modify order sets
- Revise EHR generated forms and letters
- Enable new clinical decision support rules
- Look for integration opportunities with other commonly-used systems
- Test with Patients Before Full Implementation
Before launching an EHR software solution at your healthcare organization, the system must be put to test. Running the system with trial patients can help to ensure:
- Data tables and files have been loaded properly,
- Data collected has been stored correctly,
- Interfaces work,
- All alerts fire successfully, and
- Reports are generated accurately and completely.
Modern EHR systems can significantly improve the healthcare system’s ability to deliver high-quality patient care. With a reliable vendor and diligent preparation, adopting EHR can radically transform patient care at any clinic, hospital, or organization.
