Do you like your EMR?
By now, most of you are used to your EMR’s. I talk to practice managers, billers, coders and medical assistants on a daily basis. I never once heard “I love my EMR”, but I have heard “don’t ever take it away”! So now that you have been using your EMR for an extended period of time, I’m curious. What do you think? Do you like your EMR? I am going to remind you of all the fears that I used to hear 5-6 years ago.
Pre-EMR
1. It’s going to slow me down and hurt me financially.
2. It is going to cost us a fortune.
3. It’s going to replace jobs. Especially in medical records.
4. My doctors will never be able to learn it.
5. It will put me out of business.
These are just a few of the things I used to hear when talking to practices about electronic medical records. I can tell you…I don’t hear any of this anymore. I hear a lot of this.
Post-EMR
1. I need more bandwidth, it’s slow.
2. I am charting at home and I have a few questions
3. I was able to get to my charts while I was on vacation.
4. I am happy now that I have off-site backups.
5. I want to save money by having my EMR hosted.
I am sure there are quite a few people out there who prefer the paper chart. The paper chart was not bad! It just was not as functional as and electronic system. I hope practices have embraced the EMR and feel that overall, it has helped with patient care, and is good for the practice. I really don’t hear a lot of complaints about people not being able to find records, or lab results or any other important medical information. The biggest complaint I hear is that it’s slow. Compared to somethings, like the internet, or Netflix, or other internet applications, it is slow. It’s slow because the upload matters, whereas when you are on the internet, the only upload is your keystrokes. When you are scanning documents, you will feel slow bandwidth. Other than that, I think the EMR is successful. I hope you think so too because it is here to stay!
So I’ll ask the question again…do you like your EMR?
I am interested in your opinion. Feel free to contact me at Sheryl.Cherico@tier3md.com.
