Electronic Health Records For Dummies

Building the team

Team building can identify key players to help facilitate your move to EHR. A strong leadership team is essential to ease the transition to an EHR while providing ample handholding for the rest of your organization. Two roles to fill here are

A physician champion: If you are a one-doc operation, the choice is obvious. However, if you have multiple physicians in your practice, choose someone who can be enthusiastic and educated about whatEHR can do for the staff. Generally, employees will follow suit if they see a physician who’s confident about the switch to EHR.

A day-to-day leader: Select an office manager who can coordinate everything from timelines and goals to nitty-gritty details, such as who brings the bagels for the training session.

If you are part of a large practice, consider having an EHR advisory board of stakeholders (someone from the front office, billing, nursing staff, and so on) that meets weekly or monthly to discuss how EHR is functioning.

After leadership is in place, think about whom else should be on your team. Here are some ideas:

A vendor rep: Think of your vendor rep as a team member, not an adversary (or merely a sales rep). He or she is there to make sure the EHR adoption is going smoothly to keep you all working toward the same goal.

A representative from each office role: Include a nurse, a medical assistant, a front desk staff member, ...