Software Choice Is Not the Key Success Factor

As I look across the EHR market and think about the hundreds of healthcare organizations I’ve talked to, it’s become abundantly clear to me that the software you choose has very little to do with whether you’ll have a successful EHR implementation.

One way to illustrate this is to look at the EHR marketplace. Every single EHR out there has healthcare organizations successfully using their product. Sure, we could get into the nitty gritty of how hard it was to implement. We could dive into how one EHR may have an advantage in one area over another, but then the opposite is likely to occur in another area. The reality is that there are pros and cons to every EHR system out there. The real question isn’t can you successfully implement that EHR, but what are the problems you’re likely to have with the EHR you select.

Yes, all EHRs have problems.

I love the whitepaper that my sponsor, The Breakway Group put together on “Leadership Insights: Gaining Value from Technology Investments.” It’s worth reading the whole whitepaper, but one of the key insights from their research is that the biggest determining factor in a successful EHR implementation is leadership. Leadership matters more than anything else…even the software you choose.

I’m sure that many of you are looking at your EHR implementation and wondering if you agree with this insight or not. It’s easy to think about how the EHR selection process influences a successful implementation or not. If you get buy-in to the EHR selection process, then the EHR implementation goes much smoother. Others of you might be thinking about the process you used to implement the EHR and how that was extremely important to your successful (or not successful if you had a bad process) EHR implementation. I’m sure there are many more.

While these two items and many more influence a successful EHR implementation, what so many people miss is that each of these things mentioned is dramatically influenced by having an effective leader at the helm.

A great leader ensures that there’s buy-in by the staff during the EHR selection process. A great leader makes sure that the EHR is implemented in a way that is effective and takes into account the needs of the organization. We could go on and on. Great leadership will inspire everyone that’s involved in the EHR implementation. Nothing is more important.

Many of you reading this will probably look back and know all the issues you had in your EHR implementation that led to what you might considered a failed EHR implementation. You may even wish that you’d had the right leaders to avoid these problems. If that’s the case, the solution is still the same. A great leader can inspire an organization to overcome past failures and lead an organization down a path to make their EHR useful.

I think that organizations are finally realizing that EHR implementations aren’t a one time event. The EHR go-live is an important event, but it’s really just the start of the ongoing optimization that’s required to make the software as useful as possible for an organization. This takes thoughtful planning and you got it…inspired leadership.

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.

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