The first step in choosing an electronic health record (EHR) is to determine your organization’s needs versus its wants. To do that, I suggest you create a team representing all aspects of your clinic. The team should consist of a variety of folks: from the front desk and billing to clinical staff and providers. It should include people who are computer savvy and cover the range of the entire organizational chart from bottom to top. While you want to make sure all aspects of your organization are represented, you also don’t want to have too many people. The size of the team will depend on the size of your clinic.
Once you have your team selected, get together and determine what you need from your EHR. Note that most EHR systems today are actually health records and practice management systems combined into one platform. Again, I will emphasize that it is crucial to separately identify the items that your organization needs and those that your team wants or thinks would be nice to have.
Another step is to research what EHRs are being used in your specialty. CBS annually surveys members of Medical Group Management Association to find this information. You can also use the power of networking within your local associations. Ask your colleagues about their EHR’s reporting capabilities, interfacing with auxiliary services (e.g. labs & radiology), and service response time.
After you have researched different EHRs and have narrowed down your search, it’s time for demonstrations. These can typically be done at your facility and should be done when all of your selection team can attend and ask questions. You should ask that a technical representative participate in these demonstrations. Sales representatives know a lot of information about what the product should do, but a technical representative will know more about the installation of the product and how different interfaces will work together. The more information you can gain at this stage, the better.
The last stage of the selection process should be seeing the product in action. It is preferable to see it being used in a clinic similar to yours. If you cannot find a clinic in your travel radius that is your size and specialty, focus on a specialty. The group you take to these clinics should be small in size so as to not overwhelm your hosts. Make sure to have prepared questions and hypothetical scenarios from your clinic. Scenarios explanations that illustrate how specific situations are handled are the best way to evaluate how the EHR will meet your needs.
You should now have all the information you need to make an educated choice of which EHR will meet your needs. Hopefully, that same system will meet some of your wants as well!