The Bumps, Bruises and Rewards of Transitioning to the Electronic Age of Health Care.

Three years ago I started the exciting, stressful yet exhilarating experience of  working with a hospital and loosely organized group of physicians to delve into the electronic age of healthcare. Our stretch goal is to become completely paperless. We have had our setbacks,  failures and thankfully our successes.  After three years we continually learn, innovate and we already plan to enhance what we know with a system change. We started out thinking the evolution to EMR/EHR would be a bit painful but then we would "know it" and we could relax with our accomplishment.  But, we now know enough to know that in the electronic age of healthcare change will not end, it will get faster.

We started our initial assessment of EMR Vendors by vetting about 75-80 companies. This was before the standardization that happened at the end of 2010 and continues today.  It was difficult to determine who could provide the necessary services.  Every company's presentation made their product seem adaptable to become anything we needed.  Thanks to a lengthy, highly specific RFP we narrowed the choice and made our decision.  About a week later the two front runners merged and within about two months this conglomerate had obtained a couple of the other smaller companies.  Change was already happening fast and it made us realize what a ride this transition would be.  Unfortunately the promises of total adaptability with cut and paste forms, easily convertible files and point and click processes were not a reality.  They met their contract requirements by providing the support for us to get where we needed but this was a slow and painful process for the Providers, Administration and the EMR/EHR Vendor. What we found out was that in those early stages of EHR adoption the IT companies didn't really know how a physician's practice operated, most of the physicians were more set in their ways than they realized ( and these were the Early Adopters!) and productivity and revenue plummeted.

We have made adjustments by  training...training...training, and increasing bandwidth to significant levels over "required". We standardized our own forms, process and procedures, expanded our IT department both in knowledge and in staffing, and recruited physicians with EHR knowledge to assist those still learning. As I alluded to earlier we are looking at changing our EHR in the near future to take advantage of recent advancements within the industry. 

Our productivity and revenue now surpass where we were with our paper system. We are not paperless but have made significant strides. At most if not all conferences we can see that we are significantly ahead of most other healthcare systems in the electronic age transition.  We are leaders in the healthcare field because we were willing to take the step forward, withstand the bumps and bruises and enjoy the rewards of doing what we knew we had to do to be better Providers to our community.