A physician has a degree in medicine, not computer science or business management. The good news is that selecting an EMR does not require in-depth technical knowledge. But it does require additional physician office equipment, namely a computer. An EMR can reduce time spent charting, provide more efficient patient visits and help meet regulatory requirements.

Take ownership of your decision because it will impact how you practice medicine. Do not delegate it back to office staff or your local computer guy. Although, staff should play a key role in its selection.

Determine what your requirements are. Do not let the salesman drive your selection process. Only you, the physician, know how you practice medicine. It is critical to get the ideal workflow as well as the interaction with office staff to complete a patient visit. You must determine what you want; just electronic charting or do you want end-to-end solutions that extend all the way to claim management.

This means that you must get the right EMR for your specialty. The narrow focus of a specialty EMR allows it to design its system around the unique needs of a position with in his target market. A large focus EMR will have more resources and a wider reach for a client database.

When integrating your practice management you need to consider how you want your system to support metal billing, patient scheduling and practice management. Are all these functions in one complete package or should the EMR interface with existing solutions? An advantage to integrated clinical and practice management is that an integrated coding and can help you develop a more accurate claims process during the encounter, reduce the need to “downcode” or have the staff scrub the claim later.

It is critical to find a system that makes each encounter easier, not harder. Medicine is complex enough without software making things more difficult so focus on ease of use in your search. The simplest way to evaluate ease-of-use is to sample a demo copy a straightforward system will be especially important when staff turns over and new employees need to be brought up to speed quickly.

What about support and upgrades US? You most likely want we can support and possibly nighttime support, even if only reviewing the records. You must consider how seem to support, is it online, phone, 24/7 and are you prepared to talk to a foreign support staff member. Check the references if they give you. Talked to the doctors who have already purchased an EMR. You also need to as, “Will it continue to meet regulatory requirements and support new standards? Can and will it invest in new development? How strong is the company?”

You must also consider the cost of GM cars. The prices ranging from $1000-$100000 can quickly narrow down the search of the system you want. You also need to consider Internet connections and new technologies. It is possible to access medical records entirely over the web. There are options that lower upfront costs, simplify maintenance and provide ease of use of a web application. Do not forget the technology. In healthcare development language and databases should not drive a software selection process. It should assess underlying technology from a defensive standpoint.

This will definitely add to the physician office equipment inventory increasing the value of your practice. This may not be as expensive as some of your medical diagnostic equipment but it is just as important. It may even allow you access information to some of the pharmaceutical company’s newest drugs via the Internet. Now is the time to get your EMR up and running before the government mandates.

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Tags: medical diagnostic equipment, medical diagnostics, pharmaceutical companies, physician office equipment

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.