When choosing an electronic health record system, spine surgeons have to consider multiple factors from efficiency, usability and unique needs for the practice.
Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. Becker’s invites all spine surgeon and specialist responses.
Next question: What’s the top barrier to patient access in your market? How are you addressing that?
Please send responses to Carly Behm at cbehm@beckershealthcare.com by 5 p.m. CDT Tuesday, March 25.
Editor’s note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What considerations did you weigh when picking an EHR for your practice?
Brian Fiani, DO. Spine Surgeon. (Birmingham, Mich.): When selecting an EHR system for a practice, there are several key considerations to weigh:
1. Usability: The EHR should be user-friendly and intuitive for both clinical and administrative staff. A system that’s easy to navigate can significantly improve workflow and reduce training time.
2. Features and Functionality: Assess the specific needs of your practice, including features such as patient scheduling, billing, clinical documentation, decision support tools, and telehealth capabilities.
3. Interoperability: It’s important that the EHR can easily share information with other healthcare systems and providers to ensure seamless data exchange.
4. Customization: The ability to customize templates and workflows to fit the unique processes of your practice is crucial. Every practice has different needs, so flexibility is a key factor.
5. Costs: Consider both upfront costs and ongoing expenses, such as subscription fees, maintenance, and support. It’s essential to evaluate the overall return on investment.
6. Compliance and Security: Ensure the EHR complies with regulations such as HIPAA and has robust security measures in place to protect patient data.
Brian Gantwerker, MD. The Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: We have been through one iteration that was specifically designed for a small practice like mine. Ultimately, we opted for another that had capabilities of smart scanning incoming faxes and labelling them, allowed more visibility of our accounts receivable, and had a robust mobile app that allows for ordering of labs and meds. They take a reasonable percentage of collections and have back-end connection to the hospital EMR without being chained to it. It took a while to settle on it, but with the advice of my practice manager and having a long and robust discussion, we got the ball rolling. The transition time was a little painful but now we are only buying printer paper once a quarter now, rather than every three to four weeks.
Mark Liker, MD. DISC Surgery Center at Gateway (Valencia, Calif.): Having initiated my practice in the era of paper charts, I have seen the promise of EMR fail to materialize in improving the cost of healthcare, experience of the physician or benefit to the patient. EMR promised to provide transportability to patients from one point of care to another. It is, at present, a Tower of Babel. I prefer an EMR system that is simple to use, inexpensive and allows me to obtain simple practice metrics.
Christian Zimmerman, MD. St. Alphonsus Medical Group and SAHS Neuroscience Institute (Boise, Idaho): Our parent organization chose a number of benchmark reasons for the latest EHR adoption and dissemination. The first being the high degree of interoperability, accurately ensuring that patient information is being accessed and updated across various systems in real time. This was followed by more accurate diagnoses, more effective treatment plans, improved engagement with patients and automated coding and billing. And lastly the centralized storage of all patient data, including medical history, laboratory results, imaging reports, and medication records. It is truly a work in progress scenario, but having collated patient information in one accessible format is an advantage.
