EMR: Our Dream Come True?

Change is hard, especially when it takes us outside our comfort range or more specifically, when it is forced on us.

As a management consultant, one of the grumbles I hear most often involves the transition to electronic medical records (EMR). The struggle is real. However, what may be necessary for greater acceptance and that warm, fuzzy feeling is perspective. Perhaps your relationship with this particular change will blossom if you perceive EMR not as your worst nightmare but as a dream come true. Think about this. Now you will …

·    Be held in high regard by patients who see you (and your practice) as "high tech,” “innovative,” “modern,” “state-of-the-art,” "a healthcare visionary," and “technologically advanced” even though it feels like you ate the ice cream too quickly, resulting in temporary “brain freeze.”

·    Have a better appreciation for the mindset of the younger practitioners who grew up in this Technicolor, surround sound, Wi-Fi world and recognize that having even half their skill, savvy and adaptability where automation is concerned would come in handy.

·    Teach yourself valuable time management skills by deciding: 1) is it better to take the time upfront to creatively build your own templates? Or, 2) should I stick with the pre-customized templates and monitor how long it takes until they are actually useful?

·    Understand the difference between “meaningful use” versus “not at all meaningful or useful in the least bit.”

·    Build some fun in your day by playing “Find the Hidden Chart Notes” simultaneously with “Beat the Clock” when searching for specific patient data buried somewhere in the system just as you are about to enter the treatment room.

·    Learn just how much stress your body can tolerate before you, too, reach the level of burnout that a percentage of your medical colleagues claim to be currently experiencing.

·    Enjoy a really good laugh recalling the initial sales pitch claiming that EMR will allow you to reduce your overall costs and your office/paper supplies.

·    No longer waste your valuable time learning active communication skills because even though you will be required to spend more time in the treatment room with patients, you will not have to actually make eye contact with them.

·    Praise yourself for now using that valuable time self-educating and taking on additional, lower salary clerical tasks that require specialized training (which you and your staff minimally or never received).

·    Sharpen your “pretend listening” and “pretend smiling” skills with your patients while your attention focuses on tapping out notes on your keyboard. (If you are lucky, patients may even mention their dissatisfaction to you. At this point, you get to shift blame to the new EMR system for interfering with the cherished doctor-patient relationship.)

·    Reduce the hectic patient load in order to free up more time to focus on completing unfinished notes.

·    Offer patients longer wait times to get an appointment, creating a new public impression that you must be “worth waiting for.”

·    Ask patients to provide unimportant, personal data unrelated to their foot condition and then spend additional time explaining to them why it is important that you ask.

·    Increase the family office environment by hiring more staff to handle all the additional tasks generated by an electronic system that ironically is meant to replace staff.

·    Reallocate the empty spaces in your office (previously reserved for paper chart pileups) for all new paperwork piles.

·    Look forward to restoring the 20 to 25 percent productivity that many claim EMR has gobbled up.

·    Think about early retirement more than ever.

It is said that laughter is the best medicine and this blog would be funnier if it was not so close to the truth. I am not anti-EMR but I do look at things from a pro-efficiency standpoint. I see firsthand the level of efficiency that early adopters can achieve, increased by the successful use of scribes and patient portals. I also see and hear about the many setbacks and struggles that other offices have including their own inadaptability, general time management issues, overly sophisticated programs, little to no training from their selected vendors, etc.

Electronic medical records are not just something you purchase and voila, they magically provide efficiency. It is a process, one that involves researching and buying the right system for your practice needs; learning, training and properly applying the system; training the users; knowing and following the rules; understanding how to address technical glitches, personnel glitches, integration into the office flow, security, maintenance, and on and on. Like I said, it is a process.

Until EMR becomes an asset to all medical facilities and has the capability to facilitate universal communicating and sharing patient data with each other, it will remain unacceptable to many medical professionals who reluctantly must sign up to use it. It requires ongoing change in order to meet the overall expectations of its intended purpose to improve and streamline healthcare. Yes, change is hard but hang in there. I still believe EMR will improve and when that time comes, the dream of improved efficiency and communication between clinicians will come true.