5 Things to Evaluate After Your EHR Implementation

Purchasing and implementing an electronic health record (EHR) system is an important step in evolving the efficiency and profitability of your chiropractic practice. Once it’s complete, though, you may be left with an important question: now what?

As a responsible steward for your business, you want to know whether your big investment is delivering as promised. But what do you evaluate after EHR implementation? What are the performance indicators to track, and how do you know when it’s time to take corrective action?

Chiropractic offices occupy a unique space in medicine, and experts say that there are many variables to watch as a new EHR system takes flight. According to HealthIt.gov, it’s important to evaluate your new EHR system about three to four weeks after implementation and then routinely after that, to make sure the system is on track.

The three-to-four-week timeframe is crucial because studies show that medical practices tend to revert to legacy ways of operating around that time if the implementation is not progressing as expected. With a timely evaluation, you can make changes to help the project get back on course.

But even if you do not identify any deficiencies, evaluations can still pay off by uncovering areas for improvement. It starts with asking: what do you evaluate after EHR implementation?

Five Things to Evaluate after Your EHR Implementation

An EHR system can prove transformative for your patients and employees with better care and improved workflow. A proper implementation should quickly lead to benefits for the office as a whole. Here are five things to evaluate after your EHR implementation:

1. Patient throughput: One of the goals of an EHR system is to streamline the practice to free up time to see more patients and spend more time with them. Your implementation evaluation should look at a before-and-after calculation to judge throughput.
2. Staff capabilities: The success of your EHR implementation significantly depends on your staff, as they will be at the forefront of the new workflows and responsible for educating patients. Carefully designed surveys help assess how employees are doing and how they are feeling about the system. As an example, a study of an EHR implementation at a Washington Health and Human Services department looked at perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, knowledge of the system, and training, among others, and found areas of concern for improvement.
3. Patient satisfaction: EHR and practice management systems bring efficiencies in part by turning some control over to patients. For instance, a scheduling module enables patients to choose appointment times that are most convenient for them. Giving patients access to their health records can increase engagement and improve accuracy. It is also a measurable outcome to indicate progress in implementation.
4. User-friendliness: EHR systems are high-tech projects, but they will struggle unless staff and patients find them easy to use. EHR Intelligence identifies nine categories for what it calls “useability assessment.” These include directions written in common language, reducing the number of clicks to navigate through the system, a common look and feel, and the ability of the system to provide automated feedback.
5. Coordination of resources: One source of efficiency for an EHR system is its ability to deliver accurate and updated patient information to all members of a patient care team. The healthcare system has not historically done a good job bridging silos between different types of care providers. Properly coordinated, EHRs can help ensure that all providers have the latest information about a patient for timely decision-making.

Focus Forward on Continuous Improvement

An unfavorable initial evaluation following your EHR implementation is not a reason to give up. It’s not uncommon for staff to feel dissatisfied with the new system in the first few months after implementation. Patients may also be disappointed and frustrated. But you can make changes to get the system back on track.

The evaluation is critical to identifying areas where the performance of the system can and should improve. Confidence and satisfaction in your system implementation come with time.

You and your vendor can use the information from the evaluation to plan corrective action. It might require additional training or other system refinements. It is better to identify these issues before faith in the capability of the system declines.

Ongoing evaluations are essential throughout the life of your EHR implementation. The better the data that you can capture and produce, the better your levels of care will be and the more efficient you will be.

Continuous improvement is central to realizing the transformative opportunities of EHRs.

EHR for Chiropractors by Chiropractors

Chiropractors have unique workflow considerations that EHR systems can address. For example, their practices tend to be higher volume than standard medical offices, as they see more patients during a single day for adjustments and other consultations.

Chiropractic professionals also spend much of the day on their feet. They need EHR systems that are easy to use and accessible across many devices, not only for providers but also for administrative staff.

ChiroSpring is a leading cloud-based EHR software provider specifically intended for chiropractors, with a focus on those unique needs. The company’s software was designed by chiropractors to benefit the effectiveness and efficiency of chiropractic care.

The ChiroSpring cloud-based application offers several benefits that you can evaluate with ease after launch and beyond, with an eye toward providing everything that practitioners need in one package. This includes scheduling, intake, billing, automated ERA reconciliation, outcome assessments, integrated payments, care planning, SOAP notes, and many other crucial capabilities.

Importantly, your practice can run ChiroSpring software in multiple locations with a single system implementation. This enables you to track and manage patients regardless of where they receive treatment. From a practice standpoint, doctors can create SOAP practice notes that are easily documented and shared into patient records, while staff can take advantage of advanced tools to track and collect accounts receivable.

Each of these items and more are highly measurable to document the promise of the ChiroSpring system. The company is committed to working with you to structure a process for evaluating the effectiveness of the system for the short and long term.

Get in Touch Today

Offering practice management and EHR capabilities in one package, ChiroSpring will help you spend more time in front of patients and less time on back-office tasks, all while saving on operational costs.

ChiroSpring is an all-in-one practice management and EHR system built specifically for chiropractors to help them regain face-time with patients, spend less time on back-office tasks, maintain a limited staff, and save operational costs.

To see how ChiroSpring can help you simplify how you manage your practice, reach out to one of our specialists today!