One of the most important activities you can undertake before you begin your EHR implementation journey is to standardize and simplify your processes to help prepare for automation. Unlike humans, which can handle diversity, computers hate variations. Before you begin your software selection process, get help from a practice consultant to reduce the number of appointment types you manage, reduce the number of different forms you use, ensure that your charting categories (“Labs”, “Notes”, etc.) don’t look different per patient type or physician, determine how you will manage medication lists and problem lists across the patient population, and deal with how you’ll manage paper in your digital world.
If you spend even just a few hours a week doing the prep-work before you buy any software, you will be better prepared in your selection process. Without some level of standardization your EHR implementation will either fail, be delayed, or have many unhappy users; the more you can standardize and simplify, the more likely you will have a successful outcome. A strong project manager with authority to make decisions will be the difference maker in the simplification process.
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To help you with your workflow assessment and standardization efforts, check out the The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ.gov) Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit. Even if you’ve done workflow assessments before, the toolkit is worth checking out.
