Pitfalls to avoid when choosing an EHR partner

Ambulatory focus and its impact on your practice

As one of the pioneering electronic healthcare records companies, Greenway Health has contributed to quality solutions and innovative upgrades within an ambulatory market. The EHR vendor needs to put the client first. A lack of leadership involvement, with an absence of ambulatory expertise, may cause fragmented relationships and misaligned priorities.

“We’re focused first on delivering products and capabilities our clients love. Our specialty-specific experience acts as an extension of the practice to perfect processes and workflows,” says David Cohen, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Greenway Health, “Our ambulatory software alleviates headaches with items such as patient portals, e-prescriptions, and e-authorizations. We shift the focus back to strategic technology solutions and strategies to maximize efficiencies for the user.”

It's imperative to choose an EHR company that evolves and develops new products, solutions, and services for the specific needs of ambulatory care providers. A technology partner should focus solely on streamlining workflows, developing features to enhance the user experience, and working to improve the patient experience.

An EHR partner committed to ambulatory care providers drives results for practices by decreasing physician and staff burnout, improving patient care, and advancing the greater healthcare ecosystem. Today, many EHR providers are moving away from more specialty-specific technology and into more broad-stroke solutions, causing a decline in the ease of use and limiting functionality.

Additionally, a focused health IT provider allows the provider to have scalable technology for integrated solutions for revenue cycle management, telehealth, patient portal, and practice analytics – all in one technology stack.

Data warehousing and patient care

As the revenue margins continue to slim in healthcare due to regulatory compliance, ballooning healthcare costs, and reduced insurance reimbursements, some EHR companies are shifting their focus to more lucrative revenue streams, such as data warehousing.

Data warehousing, used by some of the EHR vendors, compiles data by mining the characteristics of their clients, generating insights, and then selling the information back to their customers at a premium. The data does allow for analysis of trends, but the technology vendors see their customers as data points and not as a partner.

Those dashboards and graphs help create an analysis of patients; however, these systems do not integrate into the EHR systems resulting in click-heavy workflows, reducing patient engagement, rising costs, and further burning out providers.

Users may also feel discontent with how protected health information (PHI) is gathered and shared. Security is paramount in a world of cybersecurity threats to patient health information. Reducing access to PHI through a technology stack partner with multiple integrated systems reduces the opportunities for PHI to be at risk.

What’s more, the data warehousing vendor may also rely too heavily on channel partner utilization. Thereby, information gained from multiple sources could slow down your workflow or even be inaccurate. With long-term third-party contracts and a focus on vendor profits, data warehousing diminishes the importance of the provider and its patients’ needs.

Developing a partnership with your technology partner

When deciding on an EHR partner for your practice, another factor plays an important role – client engagement and support. Everything the EHR partner does should focus on the client. Determine how the company elicits feedback and integrates it into its technology solutions when discussing a new EHR vendor.

Greenway Health constantly gathers feedback to inform its product roadmap and company decision-making. Greenway clients can submit feedback in Functional Advisory Board meetings, Town Halls, Early Adopter Program validation, product roundtables, and product usability research within KLAS.

“Greenway Health has multiple levels of soliciting feedback that is structured to meet clients where they are and create the opportunity to engage with us at every stage of the product lifecycle,” says Cohen, “Through the multitude of interactions, we can understand the most critical needs of our clients, develop solutions to answer those needs, and implement them into our products.”

An effective onboarding and training program for users is critical for initial implementation and beyond. Disappointing service or training means the entire patient experience is reduced and is detrimental to the perception of customer service at the practice.

Training for products and services should be ongoing with your health IT vendor; technical assistance with your health IT vendor is imperative to enabling success. A Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Stat article states, “ Strong customer service culture results in lower patient acquisition costs and a higher rate of patient retention. This ultimately affects your practice's bottom line.” 

As staff turnover continues, additional support or specialized training may be needed beyond the implementation stage. In addition to implementation training for staff and providers, Greenway incorporated a new feature into its core products allowing for in-app training capabilities that push into the workflow. Greenway is moving away from hours of in-class or online training in specialized courses and moving to automate elbow-to-elbow support. This in-app training aids users when and where they need it in the technology solution maximizing productivity. 

The power of a trusted technology provider

The shift to data analytics and other areas in the healthcare IT world can leave ambulatory practices feeling left behind. However, by sourcing a true technology partner, practices can ensure that their needs are prioritized and that they receive the support they need to provide quality patient care. At Greenway, our team is committed to helping practices navigate the ever-changing healthcare landscape and developing solutions that set up providers for success.