Transitioning from Paper to an EHR

Achieving the goal to become truly paperless is not realistic. Not all systems that your patients come in contact with are fully electronic. Even if  all the hospitals, clinics, imaging centers and were on line, 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. These should be 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 defined 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. Confirm data conversion options. 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. Confirm all potential real-time interfaces and weigh based on clinical relevance, cost and resource availability to build and test. Which interfaces provide the biggest bang?
3. Analyze the cost/ benefit of back scanning and whether to use your own or third party resources. Third party resources tend to shorten the duration of a back scan project.
4. Define a go-forward scanning solution of critical clinical patient information not available electronically.
5. Consider pre-population of current medication, problem, allergy and immunization lists. Are there resources available to assist with this to ease the transition for providers?
6. Consider transcription – see previous article 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.