Transitioning from Paper to an EHR

Achieving a goal to become truly paperless is not realistic. Not all systems from all hospitals, clinics, imaging centers and laboratories that touch your patients are fully electronic, and even if they were: they don't all willingly or otherwise integrate with one another yet. Interoperability makes for interesting discussions, but demands a period of definition, evolution, more definition, acceptance and finally adoption before we see true interoperability. Paper (even if scanned) will continue to be part of the patient/ provider experience for quite some time. Phasing the implementation should be considered when guiding providers and clinical staff on their path to become paperless. The learning curve and initial productivity impact of a new system can be minimized by following appropriate plans unique and specific to your existing processes, tools and overall tolerance for change. When implementing an EHR, it is important to pick the right components at the right time to leverage synergies and improve adoption.

There are many components that need to be considered, ranked and slotted in the rollout plan. Picking your battles and prioritizing are important while achieving implementation and "meaningful use" goals as quickly as possible.

The Components:

1. Data conversion options need to be confirmed. What historical data can be converted at what cost and in what time frame? How useful is the historical data and how far back do you really want to go considering storage and potential performance impact.
   
2. All potential real-time interfaces need to be confirmed and weighed based on clinical relevance, cost and resource availability to build and test. Which interfaces provide the biggest bang?
   
3. A decision needs to be made regarding the cost/ benefit of back scanning and whether to back scan at all using your own or third party resources. Third party resources tend to shorten the duration of a back scan project.
   
4. A Go-forward scanning solution of critical clinical patient information not available electronically needs to be defined.
   
5. Pre-population of current medication, problem, allergy and immunization list should be considered as well. Are there resources available to assist with this to ease the transition for providers?
   
6. Transcription – see previous blog entry regarding transcription options.
   

Contact us for more details regarding strategies that will help you align your short and long term focus with the most effective transition to less paper.