Implementing an EHR can be difficult if the practice is small. Small practice is considered as a small business and the priority of any business is to have more money to operate. Only those who have seen the monthly pressure of running a small practice can know the reason why the EHR implementation is so hard.



But nothing is impossible; before you begin you might want to consider these mistakes:

Choosing the wrong EHR-the important part of selecting an EHR is to do the research first. You would want to pick the product that you will use to improve your practice’s efficiency.

Taking the task too lightly- EHR vendors make the implementation sound easy. To utilize the full benefits of EHR, you need to consult, plan carefully before you select the EHR.

Unclear goals-If your reason of implementing an EHR is to get the incentive from the government than that is not a good reason. You can lose far more than with a bad implementation.

Tips for Success

The definitionof a successful EHR implementation is one that doesn’t frustrate the staff and patients, or bankrupt your practice or reduce the productivity of your practice. Your goal should be to continue the daily operations normally. Follow these tips for the initial implementation:

Target on easy gains first- Advantage of having an EHR is that you can access the information from anywhere. You can access consult notes, radiology reports, labs and office notes from a single place that is accessible from any location. The difficult part of using an EHR is to put the information in the patient record. 

You can optimize your data retrieval by doing following:

  • Scan in all consultation reports, radiology reports etc.
  • Get the other practices and local hospitals to send you the important documents electronically to your EHR
  • Interface with the labs
Implementation is a process- Even after using the EHR for so many years; changes are still implemented to the process. So it is an ongoing process that never stops.

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