Most of the practices that we advise and that are using some form of EHR are struggling to make their adoption successful. The struggles range from the minor troubles such as workflow disruptions and input irritations that drive staff nuts, to the “what have we done to ourselves” sentiment. There is a common theme among these practices, and that is that every one of them made major missteps key areas of the project before the first piece of software was ever installed. They were not adequately prepared, and as one physician recently shared with me, his practice has been “harmed” by their EHR efforts.

To be fair to all sides, there is plenty of blame to go around in these struggles; practices often times don’t understand the enormity of inertia required to make the transition successful. As a result they do very little to in the planning phase. Throw in aggressive EHR vendors into the mix, whose sole purpose is to convince you as to why they are the best choice, and you have a recipe for disaster. Decision makers in the practice often rely too much on these sales people for objective guidance, and often times end up making their decision based on their feelings for the sales people, rather than what is best for their practice.

The problem with this approach is that it often results in a practice that doesn’t understand the long-term effort that is going to be required to make the implementation successful, and therefore is not prepared to move forward. In any EHR implementation, planning is the single most important phase. Good planning can make sub-par EHR software work well (and there are plenty of sub-par applications out there) and no planning can make the best EHR software a miserable failure.

You can never over-plan your EHR adoption, but under-planning is always a constant threat.

I sometimes get criticized for being too discouraging of EHR adoption, and that certainly is not my intent. Anyone that knows me knows that I understand very well the tremendous benefits of a practice EHR system, and how those benefits can transform a practice in a positive way. What I do discourage is a poor adoption strategy. Poor adoption strategies can do a lot of harm to a practice and will cause substantial setbacks. Physicians and their staff work too hard to provide the best care for their patients to be misled about the challenges that their EHR is going present.

The standard advice that I give when talking to physicians and practice leaders is to slow down. Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the frenzy of EHR’s without first giving it serious consideration and careful thinking. If you feel like you are being passed up by all the other practices out there and are tempted to put the pedal to the metal, resist the temptation. There is still plenty of time to begin the process, to develop a solid plan for evaluating, selecting, implementing and supporting the implementation for your practice.

The integration of an EHR into your practice is an important step that can pay some hefty dividends when it is done right. Take your time, be careful and deliberate in your planning and seriously getting outside, objective help in the process. By following this simple advice you can avoid doing harm to your practice.

Mark Bebout

http://www.softworksco.com/