BF3YQ5Z4E9HD Implementing and EMR system can involve a number of frustrating problems. The implementation of Jose Goris MD PC Electronic Medical Record was scheduled to take place in several stages. Staging the implementation was the proper way to move the practice forward, following an organized list scheduled events that took place over a few months. The Practice was required to complete each stage before moving to the next.
After what it seemed a long wait the practice completed all the implementation stages. The new workstations, fax server, mail server, scanners, network equipment were deployed and the Electronic Medical Record applications were installed. The staff and physicians were eager to begin the training.
These were offered by the EMR vendor. The trainings were thorough and also crammed with enormous amounts of exhaustive detailed information in a few hours time. Staff and health care providers often forgot the covered material when using the EMR after several days. The practice was technically ready to begin the transition into the paperless world of EMR, but the staff and health providers were not. The New York Department of Health provides post-training assistance as part of the contract with the EMR vendor, but it’s only offered weeks after the vendor training is over and physicians have had months of use which is not an efficient method to help transitioning into a completely new technology and one that at times is a cumbersome method of doing medicine as some of the physicians expressed. They feel medicine is not spending time in front of a computer but taking care of their patients’ needs.
The health care providers needed constant and immediate assistant after the trainings. If an issue or a question came up, a request for assistance needed to be submitted through a ticket system. People working with web development, web design and web hosting accounts are used to these types of support systems. The EMR vendor’s technicians will review a long queue of submitted requests, resolving issues as they go through the list. When your submitted ticket number is up, the practice gets a call.
By the time the practice gets the call from support to resolve the issue, the physician has already forgotten the details of the submitted ticket. It is difficult to recall or articulate the exact problem entered in the ticket number because the initial trainings were not sufficient to help the trainees internalize the information. EMR applications have an enormous number of details that are easy to forget if the system is not used constantly.
EMR are vast applications allowing complex medical workflows to be transferred into structured data for faster gathering and reporting. For this system to work effectively, health care providers have to know quick short cuts requiring just a few clicks to complete a patient’s visit. If the EMR does not provide a user friendly interface, with adequate shortcuts, the Physician will begin to experience strenuous work days. As mouse clicks begin to mount when accomplish a task that before was easily transcribed into paper, the process becomes mentally and physically draining. EMR that are click “Click Intensive” as Roswell Goris calls them, will make doctors work harder, making the transition into an Electronic Medical Records a frustrating process.
It is virtually impossible to know the user friendliness of an EMR by simply looking at a product presentation. Demos can be impressive and are easy to fall in love with, but physicians need to use a system for a few weeks before investing on a system that they will probably use during the next ten years.
The usefulness of an EMR is not measured strictly on what it can do, but also on how clearly it is remembered after training, how easy it is to implement and accomplish a work flow and whether or not it is “Click Intensive”.
All these issues can be mitigated with proper training. At Jose Goris MD PC medical practice the physicians at first were frustrated, experiencing a painful transition working with the new system. The trainings provided by the EMR vendor were not sufficient and IT staff was needed to ensure a quicker implementation.
Medical Practices need to do careful research before making an investment. Choosing a system used by colleague friends can help building a larger the support based.
