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Under utilizing your EMR?

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Sure things are going smoothly.  You did your EMR implementation, went through the learning curve and now everyone in your office has settled into a routine.  Most things work well, and some things on the EMR you wish you knew how to do, but who’s got the time to learn it?  After all, why not leave well enough alone?

A surprisingly high percentage of EMR users are found to be under utilizing their EMR.  By itself, it does not sound bad.  But when you take into consideration the cost in terms of time loss, efficiency loss etc, it adds up to a nice chunk.  Software packages evolve over time.  Generally, new and improved features are introduced to make your life easier.  It is to your benefit to take advantage of these.  If you don’t, you are only short changing yourself.

So this is where retraining comes in.  Call up your vendor and ask them to do another ‘demo’.  Usually the sales folks will make sure that the best features are highlighted in their demo, so this will give you a great overview of the current functionality of the software.  Once you do this, then you can talk about retraining.  Most companies should do this for free or a minimal charge, but even if there is a charge involved, it is probably well worth it.  In fact, including some training time each year may be a feature you could ask for in the software contract.

So stop for a minute and take a look at your EMR again.  The short time you spend retraining could end up saving you a significant amount of time.

Naveen V.

DoctorsPartner EMR and PM

www.emr-electronicmedicalrecords.com


Posted Oct 10 2006, 06:53 AM by sanvas

Comments

DrMurdoch wrote re: Under utilizing your EMR?
on 10-11-2006 1:29 PM

I suppose the classic underutilization is when doctors just choose to dictate because the EMR is too slow for them.

It is certain that many EMR endusers do not use all the features that they could.  I think part of the problem is that most EMRs are SO bloated that many of the features are really not what every group wants.  

Contrarian wrote re: Under utilizing your EMR?
on 10-13-2006 12:55 PM

The lack of full utilization stems from the decline in return from learning the additional new feature.  This should not come as a surprise.  Pareto principle & Emrupdate

www.emrupdate.com/forums/thread/35553.aspx

EMR Advocate wrote re: Under utilizing your EMR?
on 10-17-2006 12:36 PM

EMR stagnation is extremely common. I have seen many practices Go Live with the intention of implementing features "in a few months'. A year later they still haven't turned on the lab interface or spent the time to clean up the qualtity of their outbound notes. The motivation it takes to decide, purchase, and implement an EMR needs to be present for the ongoing development of the system.

GlenBernstein wrote re: Under utilizing your EMR?
on 01-24-2007 2:31 PM

I find that physicians (in general, as a group, dangerous over-generalization) usually know very little of what happens around their office (except where it directly involves them, such as the actual office visit and chart and lab results).

For example, one physician friend thought that his staff was doing patient callbacks for all visits only to find out (when I challenged that assumption) that his staff only called new patients, not existing.  Why did I challenge this? He was complaining about how many of his follow-ups were no-shows (They were usually 6 or 12-week follow-ups).

This issue transfers directly into the emr utilization, or the lack thereof.  No offense to the office staff, but many of them are not going to try new things on their own - even if it will ultimately save them time / make their lives easier.

One interesting suggestion would be to follow the microsoft and intuit models of noticing when a feature could be used, but isn't and informing the user about the new feature.

Another possibility would be to produce feature utilization reports that get sent to the office manager and physician(s) on a regular basis.  If nothing else, it might get someone to ask, "What is feature xyz, and should we be using it?"

 
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