EHR Management

Project Management and the EHR
Have you every wonder what a Health Information Management (HIM) Consultant can do for your organization during the Electronic Health Record (EHR) transition. Today health care organizations are very busy and complex operations and so many times there is not a single person or group of people that truly understands the dynamics of what goes into the selecting and implementation an electronic health record system. I have found that when an organizations starts to entertain the idea of implementing an EHR they begin to look around at the resources they already have. This is truly the best approach and one that is most cost effective. The challenge comes when they look at the size of the project and who all it is going to affect. Implementing an EHR is a huge task and encompasses so many different departments. So many individuals or groups can be taken away from their regular duties in the planning stage alone. Time management is a challenging part. The next thing that I see organizations grapple with is the aspect who has the expertise in the technology and who can work affectively with people to get the system implemented. This task alone takes a group of people or an individual that is excellent with people and very knowledgeable about the technology. The EHR vendor’s project that they can do it all for your organization but does the vendor truly have your best interest at heart. I would like to share with you a different approach. The health information management consultant is truly someone that understands the medical record and how it is evolving. They are usually the ones involved in compliance, coding and quality. What is an HIM consultant or what does a consultant do? More times than not they act as a project manager for large organizations and for smaller practices they act as liaison between the EHR vendor and the group that hired them. In either case they are there to protect and advise the organization about the EHR process.

Below is a list of some of the duties or job responsibilities
• Coordinate all activities of the EHR project, from readiness assessment and planning, to completion of implementation.
• Develop an implementation plan for process improvement, chart conversion, installation, data conversion, and other aspects of EHR implementation.
• Oversee the tasks, timelines, and resources necessary to implement the EHR, ensuring the project stays on time and on budget.
• Maintain an issues resolution log, escalating issues as appropriate.
• Lead the implementation team. This may entail installation, system build, testing, and training, or coordinating vendor implementation activities.
• Routinely monitor adoption and use and take corrective action as necessary.
• Apply updates as applicable, evaluate and recommend upgrades and enhancements, and work with users to develop reports and other uses of EHR data.
• Coordinate meetings and trainings related to EHR implementation.
• Other projects and duties as assigned by Sr. Management.

Does the project of selecting and implementing an electronic health record sound overwhelming? It doesn’t have to be. Positive Resource can help you make a well informed EHR purchasing decision by providing resources that can:

• Conduct a workflow analysis
• Highlight the benefits of several EHR solutions
• Review your professional approach to customer service and support
• Explain a 4-step EHR implementation methodology designed to reduce disruption to practice staff
• Demonstrate some ways the products and services are different from other competitors
• Offer information on medical specialty-specific EHR features
• Cover a process by which to interface your EHR system to your Practice Management system
• Provide a train the trainer approach to training continuously.

Who are we?
Positive Resource is a consulting company based in Oklahoma. Positive Resource has been in business since 2005. Ms. Claybrook is the president and chief consultant and she has over 25 years in the health care field. She has education and experience in Health Information Management and Human Resource. She loves to train others about the importance of health care information. She is currently an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City Community College in Oklahoma City and she has been there for over 2 years. She has recently served on the Oklahoma Health Information Security and Primacy Collaboration Project also known as the Oklahoma governor’s task force.

What are the benefits of project management?

• Project delivered successfully
• You will gain goal clarity and measurement of the project
• All your resources will be coordinated.
• You will save time
• You will save money
• Your employees with be adequately trained.

The choice of how your organization selects and implements the electronic record is an independent decision but one that should be taken seriously. I hope that this article has provided you with some insight to other options that are available to you.

Tags: CEO, consultant, consulting, EHR, electronic health record, Positive Resource, Project Management