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http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/docs-face-frustrations-search-it-article-shows
We just found out our IT company is closing as the founder got a federal job. We are having problems finding a qualified replacement we can afford.
Bryan D. Uslick, MD CFCDD (Gastroenterologist) eMDs user since 3/3/2006. Currently using version 6.1 (Prior Praxis user.)
Provation MD endoscopy report writer
I spoke too soon. I just met our new IT team today.
You mention one problem that many practices will face.
Being in the business of training practices that go live with a new EMR installation, there are many more obstacles that will impede the adoption of EMRs among the hundreds of thousands of docs who have yet to take the step toward a paperless office.
Large practices are different than small practices in this issue. For example, large practices are more likely to have inhouse IT support. Also, they can afford to send off a support person for training for an extended period, allowing the EMR vendor to "train the trainer" so that the practice has in-house expertise.
Here's an example from yesterday. A 2-doc pulmonary practice is making the transition to our product. They are so busy that they cannot afford any time for training. Even weekends are bad because hospital call leaves them with new patients requiring their time. Despite that, we had a training session yesterday but it put them behind on their schedule. Further, they are a pulmonary group. Despite having lots of pulmonary templates, they all need some tweaking to reflect their documentation practices.
The staff is easier to train because they typically have more circumscribed duties- registering pts, assigning incoming documents to charts, and getting vitals/cc/pmh onto the chart.
For a GI practice, I like what the physician owner did- assign her PA to augment all of the GI templates to reflect their style of documenting. It is working out very well. They have some great templates that give them the speed they want without taking much of the physician's time.
IT problems are just a hiccup. Not having well designed templates that reflect your practice style becomes a daily impediment to efficiency. There is no question in my mind that once you have a paperless environment, content is king.
"Meaningful use" will require meaningful documentation and that requires meaningful templates. Meaningful templates requires a whole infrastructure for creating and altering templates, including the ability to trade templates among colleagues and facilities (for example, email a template as an attachment; preview an emailed template and click on the content to add to your clinical store, etc).
To paraphrase Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan, "It's the content, stupid".