In a recent EMR vendor demo I did, they talked about strongly encouraging purchasers of their EMR software to do what they called a “clinical process review” before implementing their EMR. They had a contract with a third party group that would do the analysis and give the organization an idea of their current processes and what the future processes would be with an EMR. It highlighted things that would need to change, additional processes that would be added and processes that would be removed.

I’ve talked about this a lot in the past and I think it’s essential to a successful EMR implementation. I called it mapping your workflows, but clinical process review sounds prettier.

Certainly if you’re a large organization it can sometimes pay off to get someone else to do this for you. However, if you’re a small organization you can often do this yourself. Many EMR vendors will work with you on your current workflow and help you work that into their EMR software. I believe it’s absolutely essential.