Increase the Speed & Ease of Your EHR Transition
To More Rapidly Realize the Benefits of Technology
In Your Practice
If you are like most practitioners, you eagerly embrace new technology that helps you deliver better care to patients and improve the operation of your practice.
Yet at the same time, you don’t want to make a mistake that will reduce productivity, frustrate your staff, and risk damaging the practice you have worked so hard to build.
Unfortunately, these concerns can easily hold you and your practice back from the many benefits that other practices have already realized from their EHR systems.
What’s the Real Source of EHR Adoption Problems?
While many practice owners hesitate to commit to adopting an EHR, because they are concerned about making the wrong choice, researchers have found that, in the vast majority of cases, when EHR implementations run over time and over budget, and when practices fail to get the promised results from their systems, the technology is rarely the cause of the problem.1,2
The fact is, as long as you select a system that has the right components for your practice, and features that will work well with your clinical style, and as long as you work with a reliable vendor committed to providing quality support, the odds are significantly in your favor that the system can work well for your practice.
So If the Technology Is Not the Problem, What Is?
It is now well accepted that there’s more to a successful EHR transition than simply buying the right system or subscribing to the right service.3 Research overwhelmingly indicates that one of the biggest challenges in EHR adoption is changing the behavior of people.1,4,5
Dr. Nancy Lorenzi, a nationally recognized expert in the fields of medical informatics and change management in healthcare, has pointed out that the major challenges to gaining real benefits from an EHR system are more often “people problems” than they are problems with the technology itself.
A critical step in successful EHR adoption, she says, is engaging staff members at all levels of the practice, as their support is essential to making the change.6
In other words, as the practice owner, you can make the decision to buy a system, you can announce the decision to your staff, and you can even insist that everyone participate in training; but it is your staff who will decide, through their attitudes and actions, how rapidly and cost-effectively the system gets implemented and whether it is ever utilized to its full potential.
If your staff members don’t have a clear plan of action for preparing the practice, collaborating with implementation teams, and making adjustments in how they do their work, even the most ideal system for your practice will never deliver on its potential.
In fact, a lack of staff support, participation, and collaboration is the reason why so many EHR implementations run over time and over budget. It’s why practices often need to bring on one consultant after another, in an attempt to solve problems and optimize practice workflows.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
The good news is, the same researchers who identified “people problems” as the source of EHR adoption difficulties and failures also found that effective change management strategies can build staff buy-in, participation, and collaboration in EHR implementation and result in a faster and more successful transition.1
A Research-Based Program to Meet the Needs of Your Clinical Practice
Until now, physicians wanting to ensure the best possible return on their EHR investment have had only one option – hire a consultant to manage the project from start to finish.
Certainly there are times when outside advice and assistance is valuable, even essential. However, putting responsibility for the entire transition into the hands of someone unfamiliar with your practice needlessly adds tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a system and gives you no guarantee of getting the results you want.
Plus, even the best consultant, the best outside project manager and the best implementation team won’t get optimum results if staff members don’t fully support the change. And it’s very difficult, next to impossible, for an outsider to get genuine buy-in and support from practice staff within a matter of weeks – or even months.
The Realizing the Promise EHR Adoption Toolkit, solves this problem.
Based on the 7 step system for managing change in the clinical practice (detailed in our widely-acclaimed Realizing the Promise: How to Maximize the Benefits of Electronic Records in Your Practice) the EHR Adoption Toolkit is the first and only self-contained program designed to systematically guide owners and managers of clinical practices through a successful transition to using electronic records.
The Toolkit combines the results of peer-reviewed research in medical informatics with proven staff performance, productivity, and change management strategies. It details an actionable 7-step system for both increasing the speed and success of EHR adoption and for realizing better bottom-line outcomes from the system.
Benefit From Thousands of Hours of Research & Bring
a Proven Change Management Strategy to Your Practice
This self-contained program:
- Provides a clear plan of action for your practice staff – regardless where you are in the EHR adoption process – so you can avoid delays, get your system up and running more quickly, and more rapidly see a return on your investment
- Increases the likelihood of selecting the right system configuration, components and interfaces – the first time around (so you don’t waste time and money)
- Provides your practice manager with a systematic approach to building staff buy-in, participation, and collaboration for a smoother, more successful transition
- Takes much of the burden of project leadership off your shoulders, putting less of a strain on practice operations and enabling you to maintain your productivity
- Allows you to maintain oversight of the project without compromising your patient care activities
- Helps you avoid common and expensive selection and implementation mistakes (identifies potential problems before they occur, so implementation teams don’t have to come back and reconfigure)
- Helps you save time and money on training and support
- Increases the value your practice gets from vendor training, IT consultants, Regional Extension Center, and other consulting services
The Realizing the Promise EHR Adoption Toolkit enables your practice manager and staff to effectively manage much of the EHR preparation and transition work, enabling you to keep expenses down and practice productivity up, throughout the transition.
Because your staff already knows how you work, how your practice operates, and where inefficiencies and bottlenecks occur, they can contribute enormously to the work of implementation teams – getting the system up and running more rapidly, getting the installation done right the first time, and saving your practice thousands of dollars in unanticipated and unnecessary consulting fees to resolve problems arising from a poorly conceived implementation.
Toolkit Components:
Fast Start Guide
The first steps to take to get off to a fast start with the program whether you:
- are just beginning to look at EHRs
- are in the midst of an installation
- want better results from your current system
This 10 minute guide briefly outlines which materials to review yourself and which ones to give your practice manager for action.
Realizing the Promise: How to Maximize the Benefits of Electronic Records in Your Practice
This widely acclaimed Practitioner’s Guide walks you through the essential steps of gaining staff support, cooperation, and participation – and effectively delegating hands-on responsibilities for your EHR project so you can maintain patient productivity during the transition.
Realizing the Promise – Introductory CD for Practitioners
Covers the most important points in the Practitioner’s Guide in a convenient audio format.
Practice Manager’s Action Guide
A step by step action guide that leads your practice manager (or project manager) through the essential steps of managing the change, coordinating staff actions, and effectively collaborating with implementation teams. Includes a series of assignments and checklists to ensure that no essential steps are left out.
Practice Manager’s Action Guide CDs
A “coach in a box” for your practice manager – walking him or her through the Action Guide and answering frequently asked questions.
Redesigning Practice Workflow for Better Bottom-Line Outcomes – Process Mapping DVD
Some of the biggest gains from an EHR come from more efficient practice workflow. A more efficient workflow enables your practice to see more patients in less time and can reduce working hours for physicians and staff. With the information in this DVD, your practice manager and staff will be able to easily diagram your current practice workflow and collaborate with implementation teams to design more efficient practice processes. The information in this DVD alone can save you thousands of dollars in consultant fees.
How to Improve Practice Performance in 60-90 Minutes a Week
Today’s most successful companies and non-profit organizations use “Workshops” to continually improve their bottom-line performance. This concise guide provides your practice manager with a step-by-step system for planning and facilitating workshop-style staff meetings to facilitate EHR implementation and improve your practice’s performance.
Regardless what type of EHR you select or what specific system you choose, by providing your practice staff with a clear plan of action – a blueprint for successfully preparing your practice, managing the transition, coordinating staff actions, collaborating with vendor implementation teams, and assigning responsibility for project details – you significantly increase your chances for a rapid and successful transition to electronic records.
The EHR Adoption Toolkit is in production. Please fill out the form below, and we will notify you when it is available to order.
References
- B. Kaplan & K. Harris-Salamone, Health IT Success and Failure: Recommendations from Literature and an AMIA Workshop, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 16(3):291-299, May-June 2009
- R.H. Miller, I. Sim, and J. Newman, Electronic Medical Records: Lessons from Small Physician Practices, California HealthCare Foundation, Oakland CA, October 2003
- AHRQ National Resource Center: Health Information Technology, Electronic Medical Records Systems. http://healthit.AHRQ.gov Accessed March 2, 2010
- N. M. Lorenzi & Robert T. Riley, Managing Change: An Overview, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 7(2):116-124, Mar-Apr 2000
- Glaser J. More on management’s role in IT project failure. Healthcare Financial Management, 59:82–89, 2005
- B. Kaplan & K. Harris-Salamone, Health IT Success and Failure: Recommendations from Literature and an AMIA Workshop. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 16(3):291-299, May-June 2009
- A report of Dr. Nancy Lorenzi’s session at the Physician’s IT Symposium at the HIMSS 2006 annual meeting, in Pat Rich, Do it right when implementing IT. Future Practice (11 April 2006)