101 Tips to Make Your EMR and EHR More Useful – EHR Tips 51-55

Time for the next entry covering Shawn Riley’s list of 101 Tips to Make your EMR and EHR More Useful. I hope you’re enjoying the series.

55 Discover how easy it is to interface to the EMR.
One good indication of how easy an EMR system is to interface is to look at how many companies they interface with. Another is to talk with other users of that EMR that have had to have an interface created with said EMR. As I mentioned in a recent comment response, just because they say they “can” or “could” do an interface doesn’t mean that they actually will. Add interface requirements in your contract if they’re needed. Be sure to include the expenses related to the interface in there as well.

54. Make sure to understand the licensing model
There are a lot of ways for an EHR vendor to make you pay. So, be sure you’re aware of all the expenses related to buying and implementing an EHR. Instead of recounting all the possible EHR costs here, I’m just going to link you to my pretty comprehensive list of unexpected EHR costs. Going through that list will help make sure you know what you’re getting into cost wise. You can be sure the EHR salesperson won’t be giving you this list.

53. Does your product handle billing?
Many people love the integrated billing in an EHR. Some can get away without it, but most people I know prefer some billing component as part of the EHR.

52. How is licensing managed?
While related to #54, I see this EHR tip as understanding when and how they’ll charge for licenses. Do you have to buy a whole group of licenses which you may or may not use or can you add licenses later as you grow your practice? As Shawn suggests in this tip, it’s best if you can do “just in time licensing.”

51. Make certain you know what upgrades for license expansions cost
Understand the costs related to expanding into a new line of service. Do you have all the modules you need? What’s the cost to add new modules? Will your server support that new module?

If you want to see my analysis of the other 101 EMR and EHR tips, I’ll be updating this page with my 101 EMR and EHR tips analysis. So, click on that link to see the other EMR tips.

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.

   

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