Electronic Health Records For Dummies

Developing demonstration scenarios

Vendor demonstrations provide a great opportunity to see the products, meet the team, and “test drive” the system with your colleagues. Think of demos as EHR speed dating. All the vendors have their own scenarios and features that they want to show off. However, the demos are about how each product meets your specific practice needs.

Here are some simple guidelines for creating successful and useful demonstration scenarios:

Ask the vendor to demonstrate the functionality that is available and in use by other ambulatory practices.

Request that each vendor be prepared to discuss his or her RFI responses. Especially concerning (but not limited to) implementation timelines, support, training, pricing, interfaces, and overall integration.

Craft three to four reasonable clinical scenarios. If you’re part of a multi-specialty clinic, make sure to include scenarios from each specialty.

Make sure that one or two of the scenarios are simple, straightforward patients. You want to see the efficiency of the system in action.

Create one or two clinically complex patient scenarios. You want to see how the system can help you manage your real world patient in the 15-minute time slot you have.

Think about some of your difficult workflows, communications with patients, or general clinical quality. Ideally, the EHR that you are choosing can help you solve some of ...