EMR Change Agent, EMR Workflow, and Volume Billing Driven EMR


I think the article took a little different take on the tweet than I did when I first read it, but I love the idea of using the EMR as a powerful change agent in your organization. Many executives say they wish they could change some things about their organizations. EMR can be one method to help implement some of those changes. Far too few are using it to really effect change for good in their organizations.


This feels a bit like semantics for me and you know I avoid semantics. What I do know is that EMR can make an ugly workflow really ugly or a beautiful workflow really beautiful.


This road already seems paved. The question I have is whether we’re willing to rip up the road and replace it. There’s some signs that it’s going to happen, but I’m still not confident in those signs.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • John, regarding the difference between an EMR and workflow (“semantics”) — it’s like saying your route to work is the same as your car. What you drive and how you get there are distinctly different things. If your only route to work is fraught with stoplights, construction and delays, a Ferrari is a bad fit. The point here is that if you want to get to work more quickly, the Ferrari won’t make it happen. The route has to change. Then the Ferrari can be optimized. Otherwise, it is a waste. Helping people understand the distinction between the workflow (process) itself (“to treat a patient today, we need to obtain this information, move them to this room, etc.”) and the tools that are used to facilitate it, is a powerful and enlightening exercise that tends to open up a world of process improvement opportunities. They key is to fit the EMR to your process (one that has been improved to remove waste, inefficiency, etc.), not the other way around.

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