December 2008 Secret to Success

Communication between practice and vendor. The word communication may seem over used; in this case however, it truly is the secret for success. Too many EMR deployments have gone bad due to lack of communication. The vendor is responsible to set up a level of expectation, the practice needs to comply with the instructions or inquire as they see fit. Yes the vendor's project manager should be very open with you all along the way, and when that person asks you for information please respond. Although your practice is important to the EMR Company, the EMR Company has other clients as well.

In today's medical practice different staff members are all being pulled into many different directions. It is easy to put off today what can be done tomorrow or the next day or the next and so goes the deployment. If a time frame is discussed and agreed upon, please keep to it. If changes need to be made, that's ok, just communicate it with the project manager.

To the vendors: Please provide a realistic time frame understanding that the practice has many things going on everyday. While the practice may want to begin using the EMR right away, sometimes they cannot get to the training as scheduled. Some vendors then leave it up to the practice to reschedule, while others get the next training session scheduled right then. This demonstrates to the practice the vested interest in the success of deployment and it is also a tremendous time saver for everyone.

Working together can make the success of EMR a reality for the practice. The investment of an EMR is not just dollars spent, but an investment of time. If time is money, than the investment of time should pay its dividends. This should be a long term relationship and each participant should approach it as such. This is practical and simple, but we have seen too many breaks in the chain of communication through the years of EMR.

For more information please read the e-book found at www.emrexperts.com