The Process Of Training Staff For EMR

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This past year, I’ve attempted to take the readers of these articles along with us as the practice transitions from paper record-keeping to electronic medical records, or EMR. Colleagues have contacted me, inquiring about why the process is so long and involved. Some articles written about EMR projects describe projects which take around three to four months to complete.

Maybe for a technically-inclined practice which already uses a basic EMR system from just one location this is possible.

Still, I hope I have been clear that for the majority of practices there is much more to the process than a simple installation of software and training staff to use it.

The change over to EMR is a huge shift of the culture at a practice – and addressing this issue in particular can make or break the success of a project of significant magnitude and cost.
We last covered the breakdown of the work structure for our EMR implementation strategy. This time we’ll discuss the staff training process.

Electronic medical records (EMR) training can be completed in three steps:

Identify the Current Skill Level:

Although today most young people are familiar with computers, the Internet, and PDAs, a large amount of adults have limited exposure to these technologies. Luckily, most physicians have to keep up with technological progress by necessity, and most likely use computers regularly. Still, many of the other staff may have only limited experience with using computers at work and limited skills as a result.

To determine a staff person’s computer proficiency, he may be asked which programs he’s used and examples of the types of tasks performed in the application. A staff person’s competency can also be determined through the vocabulary that they are familiar with.

Bring the Staff up to the Needed Skill Level:

While planning to implement an EMR or EPM system with a graphical interface, obviously all your staff members will need some computer skills such as drag-and-drop and understanding how computer files are saved. Specific required tasks will be different depending on the employee job description. As an example, the majority of your employees will have to understand how to use the EPM system to make or look up appointment info. Some staff will require the ability to check patients in and out, and others still will need to generate claims or post money. The technical staff may not have to know the claims process, but certainly will need to be proficient in the EMR process.

Design a Plan to Train for the New Software:

The electronic medical records committee must design a training plan which takes the factors above into consideration. The committee will have to determine what the common tasks for every employee will be, then adding additional skills of increased complexity to the appropriate departments and jobs.

The entire staff roster should be taught the system basics. Next, the department should rotate through the training room to receive training on the necessary tasks for their particular jobs. A manual was prepared for the EPM software module, and another is being written for the EMR module. Improvements will be made to this training manual throughout the training process.

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Peter J. Polack, M.D., F.A.C.S., is founder of emedikon, a medical practice management consulting firm and president of Protodrone, a software development company specializing in medical practice applications. See: http://medicalpracticetrends.com/topics/for-new-practitioners/ for more info.