Four Things Your EMR Must Have For Improved Productivity

Productivity in your clinic is essential to your success and the success of your patients. Charting and note taking can make you spend more time with your computer than with your patients.

We Don’t Spend Time Talking About Charting

My brother-in-law is a computer programmer. He writes code that makes computers do interesting things. I don’t always follow how the magic happens, but it often seems when we talk about his work, we wind up talking about theory and applicability.  We talk about the impact of his projects and their potential uses across industries.  We rarely, if ever, talk about the actual time he spends typing.

Most of his job is conceptualizing and thinking. When he finally writes the code that makes the computer do what he wants it to do, it’s actually a very small proportion of his workday. The programming industry has realized that most of your best work is done away from the computer, even when you’re working specifically with computers.

Healthcare has been slow to arrive at this same conclusion. Across disciplines and professions, charting and note taking has become not only a bottleneck to increased patient volume and productivity, but it has also perpetuated the idea that more time at the computer equates to less time with the patient.

How EMR Products Can Help

EMR products for Physical Therapy providers vary dramatically.  It’s clear that some have evolved from large hospital management tools with a “billing-forward” feel. Others have obviously been designed as a scheduling tool with documentation feeling like an afterthought. Many tools have a single strength or attribute that rises to the surface with testing and use, but it is a rare product that does not sacrifice efficiency for the sake of other strengths. Agile EMR focuses on your productivity as a Physical Therapy provider.

Four Ways to Improve Productivity Through Agile EMR

Below is a list of four attributes that I have seen add to efficiency, increasing time with each patient as well as reducing rework for billing or compliance.

• Templates: Without question, for an EMR to be efficient for clinical use, it MUST make use of templates that contain common tests and measures for the body part being assessed as well as established norms or functional goals common for the condition. Goals can be rapidly modified to add specificity for the individual patient but rewriting the typical structure evaluations from scratch is an unacceptable use of time.
• Easily accessible patient information from the schedule: Information about the patient’s physician, contact information, next appointment, or documentation information should be three clicks away or less from the schedule. Reducing the time spent searching for answers to the most common questions is a simple place to look for gains in overall efficiency.
• Responsiveness: Some EMR platforms have become efforts to meet every possible contingency.  Instead of being flexible, they try to be everything to everyone.  If your IT department has an unlimited budget and unlimited resources, the performance degradation that accompanies this strategy may not be immediately noticeable.  With the resources typically used by a smaller practice, however, the challenges of memory use and time are real.  Make sure the EMR you choose is quick to load and quick to save on the equipment you plan on using. All else being equal, choose speed and efficiency over potential features that you may or may never use.
• Visual Cues: An EMR is more than a tool for documentation.  It’s schedule flow, workflow, and practice management all in one.  Visual cues that show you the mix or payers or the mix of appointment types or whether patients have arrived, or whether notes are completed for a given visit are all critical to making sure nothing slips through the cracks.  These might include different colors for appointment types or interventions or check marks for task completion.  Very few things can waste your time like looking for what hasn’t been done.

When assessing your choice for an EMR, start with the question of whether it meets all your fundamental needs like scheduling, documentation, and billing. Then consider how quickly that tool can meet those requirements. Only then should you focus on the extras. Don’t forget the goal. Prioritize spending less time with your computer, and more time with your patients.