These three key EHR features will help you get the results you want:
1. Flexible workflow. ASCs’ competitive advantage over other providers is based on operational efficiency. To maintain that advantage, ASCs must ensure that EHR deployment enhances, rather than obstructs, the clinical workflow. To that end, it is important that ASCs consider solutions designed specifically to accommodate ASC workflow.
Big, enterprise EHRs designed for inpatient organizations are not typically optimized for ambulatory outpatient facilities. Too often “one-size-fits-all” becomes “one-size-fits-nobody.” There is no quicker way to alienate a physician than to say, “You have to change your entire workflow because the EHR won’t allow us to do it that way.”
Your EHR should accommodate your organization’s unique workflow, not the other way around. To make sure that happens, look at solutions that are designed specifically for the ASC industry and that offer flexibility in charting. Solutions that feature a modular design will allow you to easily customize the charting system to your workflow without paying exorbitant fees to customize an inflexible off-the-shelf solution.
2. Customized views. In the old days, clinicians had to flip through pages and pages of a patient’s paper chart to find the information they were looking for. It was time-consuming for physicians to find the specific information they needed to review and sign off on.
Some of today’s EHR solutions are not much better. Instead of flipping through paper pages, clinicians are forced to click through screen after screen of digital information that is not relevant to them. The solution to this problem is a feature called customized views. Customized views allow an organization to attach specific data fields to particular clinician workflows. This means the preop nurse sees what a preop nurse needs to see; and the surgeon sees what the surgeon needs to see. Neither one has to click through a lot of irrelevant data to perform their specific tasks.