With your system tested and training scheduled you’ll need to plan your changeover strategy. There are a number of factors that will need to be considered when planning this phase of the implementation including: How busy is your office? Are you sufficiently staffed to handle the increase in work during the implementation phase? How many records need to be transferred to the EMR? Will the doctors be starting out with a hybrid record or going straight into a fully paperless system?
There are a number of ways to approach the changeover phase:
Tip: Before this process is started all old records and records of deceased patients or patients which have moved should be purged.
Taking a day to day approach your office will scan in and perform the data entry for every patient that will be seen the following day the day before their appointment. One day is chosen for the go live date and from that point forward all data is entered into the EMR the day before the appointment. Over time each days work becomes less and less as patients return for subsequent visits. This approach works well for offices that are well staffed or smaller in size.
Entering in patient charts weeks or months in advance can also be done. The challenge with taking this approach is that the data on the go-live date may be outdated from when the data was originally entered into the system weeks or months before. In most cases all the information will be scanned into the EMR along with all other data entry but at the time of the visit the data is updated by the staff and checked over by doctor during the visit to double check its consistency.
Using a hybrid record will allow your physicians to ease into using an electronic medical record while removing your offices’ dependency on the chart since the patients current data will be found in both the EMR and the paper record. While taking this approach is unnecessary work, it can help offices’ move to becoming a paperless office. Implementing the hybrid record in your office is done by continuing to have the doctor use the paper chart but all data from the visit is scanned into the EMR thereby making the data accessible in two locations at all times.
Tip: Hiring the help of temporary employees to assist in the process of scanning and data entry of old chart information into the new system can be relatively inexpensive and can reduce the strain on your employees.
If you are converting to a new Practice Management System at the same time, you will need to decide how you will move your accounts receivables over. One method is to close out all your accounts receivables in the old system from one date forward or the balances can be carried over to the new system and old charges manually entered into the new system. Unfortunately data conversions from one system to the other rarely work in this case so this usually needs to be done manually. In any event both systems will need to be run concurrently so it’s usually a good idea to maintain an active support contract with the vendor of the old system in case you encounter a problem.
Once your turnover strategy is complete you’ll need to set dates for training and a time frame for the remaining phases. You’ll also want to implement some form of project management with the schedule to help you stick to your plan. This should include regular meetings on the project and list of issues that come up so they can be dealt with in a more systematic approach.
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