Tips for Your 1st Day of EHR Implementation

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Back to school time is upon us and “Tips for a Successful 1st Day” posts are being shared all over our social feeds. But the topic got us thinking of the many 1st Days we’ve participated in through the years as we have helped our clients launch new tech or start an EHR transition. So below you will find our top 4 “Tips for a Successful 1st Day”. 

# 1: Complete Numerous Tests Following Your EHR Implementation

New systems come with a variety of quirks. They can be temperamental. The workflows you think will work one way often work another. The hard stop fields that you didn’t know existed can keep notes open and charges from being submitted. The only way to get to know these little nuances is through extensive testing. And not just testing in the “test environment” but testing in PROD. And while the PROD environment is typically not available until much closer to go-live it is worth having a team dedicated to running workflows from top to bottom inside the live system prior to go-live.  

# 2: Sing out of the same songbook. 

You may be asking what this has to do with a successful 1st day but making sure all teams using the new platform are trained consistently and have a firm understanding of the data governance rules for the new system is critical. What defaults are to be used for unmappable fields, what’s the crosswalk for insurance entry from the old system to the new, what’s the correct way to add notes that will carry forward from visit to visit. If everyone is singing out of the same data governance songbook, it will make Day 1 go much smoother, and set your new platform up for data quality in the long run.  

#3: Plan for the unexpected. 

Your teams won’t know what they don’t know on Day 1. But well before day 1 it never hurts to throw every worst-case scenario you can think of on a white board and contingency plan for the what ifs. What if the new tech crashes, what is the backup? What if there are hard stops to entering or acquiring data we weren’t aware of…who will those go to for resolution? Having escalation and resolution teams in place to address items as they arise will give everyone confidence when the unexpected occurs.  

#4: Work with good, experienced partners 

Implementing new tech or system wide EHR migrations don’t happen in a health organization every day (thank goodness). Finding a good, experienced implementation partner who provides healthcare managed services is critical to help walk you through the process, utilize industry best practices, find cost saving efficiencies and help your organization have a successful 1st day.  The tips we are sharing above are some of the “golden nuggets” we have learned as we have partnered with so many health systems to provide EHR implementation, ongoing clinical abstraction, and data and document staff augmentation solutions. Through our clinical and operational abstraction services our teams can help you map out each piece of this process, double check each step and then assist in testing workflows and virtual go-lives so that surprises can be mitigated. Part of our ongoing partnership and QA is to always share our best practices and experiences learned from our past which make for flawless 1st days!!

If you are currently planning for a 1st Day of EHR implementation, Book A 15 Minute Discovery Call and learn how MDabstract can help make it a successful one.  

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