Electronic Medical Record (EMR) adoption will require more than financial carrots and sticks

Chad Hiner, RN, MS, Executive Director, HealthcareHealthcare Leave a Comment

True adoption of EMRs will require much more than financial carrots and sticks. Hospitals will need to see an increase in productivity, an increase in reimbursement, improved quality, higher patient satisfaction and a reduction in medical errors. Today’s EMR systems have not lived up to their hype. They have certainly not lived up to their price tags.

It is time for a second generation of applications to fill in the gap. Applications that are simple, intuitive, portable and affordable. Applications that were developed to support clinical workflow.

The good news is that these applications are growing in popularity. This is especially true amongst ambulatory care providers who are beginning to see an uptick in productivity and quality of documentation.

One of the advantages of implementing an EMR is the standardization of documentation for all of the providers in a practice. Documentation standardization reduces the opportunity for human error and helps create a consistent workflow. When a workflow is established, it can then be automated. Once this foundation is set, the difficult part of adoption begins.

This is where workflow automation tools come in—they assist providers in quickly locating the section of the EMR that requires attention. One example is a tool that allows a provider to use his/her voice (in a natural way) to document clinical findings. With the click of a mouse or with a few spoken words, a task that previously required multiple steps can now be automated. This automation process is specific to the clinic and to the provider, not the EMR.  This means the technology is working for the provider, not the other way around.

There is little doubt that the implementation of an EMR is disruptive, time consuming and costly. Post implementation workflow optimization is the next step in driving true EMR adoption. SayIt™ is a cloud-based speech recognition solution that supports clinical workflow through the use of navigation commands to the most frequently visited sections of an EMR.   SayIt also supports the use of templates, macros and commonly used phrases that can be customized to a specific provider or shared across an entire organization. With SayIt, providers can continue spend more time with their patients and less time at the computer.

If you’re interested in seeing firsthand how SayIt automations support EMR adoption, contact me directly @ chad.hiner@nvoq.com.

About the Author

Chad Hiner, RN, MS, Executive Director, Healthcare

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