EMR Under Construction (Implementation) Sign

I saw a tweet of a picture from the front desk of a doctor’s office that’s implementing an Electronic Medical Record in their office. I’ll embed the image below, but since it’s a little hard to read, here’s the text from the sign:

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Pardon us while we improve your visit.

In order to provide you with the most efficient visit possible, MedExpress is installing an EMR (Electronic Medical Records) system.

This technology enables MedExpress to provide you even more convenient care, and ensures that your records will hold more accurate documentation, in a safer, more concisely stored location.

By 2012, it is federally mandated that healthcare providers initiate electronic health records. MedExpress is keeping up with the current health information technology. In addition, this promotes “green practices” to lower our paper usage.

Please bear with us, as we are currently in training with this system.

This sign brings up a lot of interesting talking points. The first one that hits me is back about 5 years ago when I heard someone propose (mostly jokingly) the idea of having a “Got EMR?” sign for offices. This isn’t quite the same, but does use some of the same idea of the value of EHR to patients.

I’ll set aside the part of the sign that talks about the government EHR mandate since we’ve talked about it plenty of times before (and how it’s not really a mandate). I’ll also avoid commenting on the “green practices” section of the sign, but it’s amazing how green has infiltrated marketing.

Instead, does anyone else find it amazing that the anticipated slow down for this clinic’s EHR implementation was so big that they typed and printed up a sign explaining the slow down? Maybe it’s just during the time that the doctors are training and not actually a slow down that has to do with actual use of the EHR after training. Although, I know many EHR vendors that are now rolling their eyes when they hear about the EHR training and implementation time and its effect on physician productivity.

I can’t help but wonder which EHR software this clinic is implementing. That would be interesting to know.

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.

4 Comments

  • I like the fact that the word “vonvenient” and the phrase “more accurate documentation” are in the same sentence. 🙂

    ~Mike

  • I don’t find the fact that the practice took the time to notify their patients of the slow down “amazing” at all. In fact, it is completely normal and a great PR move to keep the patients in the loop regarding their healthcare and the way it is changing. I don’t think it was necessary to notify the patients of the government mandates, but I appreciate the practice trying to prepare the patient for a change in their care. In fact, in my physician network’s massive Go Live project (totaling 15 practices) I am the one in charge of collaborating with marketing in developing the signage for our practices. The signs are actually a huge request from our CEO as well as the practice managers. The patients really appreciate the heads up so I am all for these signs.

  • I forgot to add that we are implementing Allscripts EHR in these 15 practices…and informing the patient prior to Go Live with signs and extra reminder phone calls is a direct recommendation from Allscripts. The provider’s schedule is reduced by at least 50% so it is expected by all that the visits will take longer than normal as the provider learns the system in a real-time manner.

  • Natalie,
    Don’t misunderstand my amazement. It’s not that they’re communicating with patients. I’m all for that and a sign is a great way to do it.

    The amazement surrounds a combination of things including, patients care that they’re upgrading to EMR, that the change to patient care is so significant that they need a sign (some EHR don’t require cutting provider’s schedule much), and then of course them promoting the EHR stimulus money. Plus, the most amazing part is that they say that it’s federally mandated when there is no mandate.

    I’ve used a sign before in an EMR implementation, because as you say communicating with patients is a great thing to do. This sign was “amazing” to me for other reasons.

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories