Before buying an EMR system, learn from others? mistakes

Technically Speaking. By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff.

If you talk to 10 physician practices after a major technology implementation, you’ll likely get 10 different stories about the lessons they learned.

So what is the biggest mistake? Experts say it’s not listening to those doctors and learning from their experiences.

Consultants say no matter whether you are a hospital or small physician practice, or whether you are implementing an electronic medical record or an e-prescribing system, there are patterns in the mistakes made during the shopping for and implementing of technology.

“In medicine, there will be times when people try things and they will turn out to not be the best things to do. You don’t want to be in a situation of making a mistake when “all you had to do is check with somebody to find the appropriate way to do things,” said James Jose, MD, a pediatric critical care doctor who is chief information officer of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Richard C. Howe, PhD, vice president of business development at Healthcare Informatics Associates, said he, too, has seen several implementation projects fail after trying to go it alone without asking for advice from experts or peers. HIA, based in Bainbridge Island, Wash., provides health IT consulting and implementation services.

Experts such as consultants, trade groups and user groups, have a wider pool of experiences to draw from, Howe said. And peers are important because they can provide an overview of what problems they ran into and how they solved them. EMR