Have a New EHR System? Why Training Your Staff Is Key

Is your medical practice switching from paper records to electronic health records (EHRs)? Are you switching from one EHR system to another?

EHRs are vital tools that could assist your practice and ultimately, your patients. But adopting one or switching to a new EHR system could be challenging.

That’s why training your staff beforehand is crucial. EHR system training provides many benefits because you could

Build confidence and reduce fears

Technology improves our lives in many ways, but it’s always evolving.

A new EHR system might seem frightening for staff members who are accustomed to other systems or ways of doing things. It could be even more daunting if you’re switching from paper to electronic files, or if employees don’t have a lot of other experience with medical software applications.

Discussing why EHR is important and how it could simplify their lives could help alleviate these fears. During these discussions, you could mention how your practice has successfully changed in other ways and tell them that you’re confident that they could weather these changes.

Help staff members teach others

Confidence-building team meetings and training sessions could help everyone in the practice now and in the future.

Giving demonstrations of your new EHR system teaches your staff members how to use it and apply it to everyday situations. Once they have this knowledge, they could help each other.

They could also use such knowledge to assist any new team members your practice might employ.

Learn about EHR yourself

Meetings and training sessions could also be good methods of training yourself.

To teach something, you need to know it pretty well. You need to learn how to use EHR systems yourself before instructing others.

If your staff is also learning, you could work together to teach each other. Participating in demonstrations (demos) and instructional sessions could also foster a sense of camaraderie because you’re all facing the same issues together.

Determine whether it works with other systems

Learning about a new EHR system is more than learning how to use the system.

Because while you’re learning how to enter data, access information, and perform other tasks related to your EHR software, you’re also learning about the system itself. You could determine whether this EHR system is compatible with your practice management software.

Does your EHR software work with your practice management software to help schedule appointments, share information, communicate with patients, and perform other tasks? You could use the training period to answer this question and others.

Check for errors in the system

In addition to determining the compatibility of an EHR system, training could also help you check whether it works.

During these sessions, you and your staff members could check whether your new EHR software is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Is it letting you enter, save, and access information? Are you able to use other features easily? Are there glitches in the software?

Checking for errors in the training stage could prevent frustration when you’re trying to use the system in real time for work purposes.

Make changes

Similarly, if you spot errors in your EHR system, you could fix them.

Training periods could be a good time to make any necessary changes. Many EHR software manufacturers offer troubleshooting and support services. Medical practices could work with these services to correct errors and customize systems to suit their needs.

Staff members might have to make adjustments as well. Making these changes as they’re learning could prevent minor errors from becoming major.

Decide if an EHR system works for you

This adaptability demonstrates that while EHR systems are investments of time and money, they’re not final and unchangeable.

By undergoing EHR software training, you and your staff could determine if the system works for your practice, if you need to make alterations, or if you’d like to abandon the system entirely and return to your old one or another option.

Again, it’s a good idea to talk to the EHR manufacturer and its support workers. They might have suggestions for using and changing the system in ways you didn’t know or haven’t considered.

Implement new EHR systems faster

Holding group training sessions could save time.

Instead of each staff member learning the system individually and facing similar issues, group classes could train multiple people in fewer sessions. They could also address many of your staff members’ common problems and questions at once.

Your practice might want to designate one or two of your employees as superusers. Superusers are employees who have more knowledge of and access to your office’s software. They could teach others how to use the system, answer questions about it, and serve as liaisons between your staff members and IT workers or software representatives.

Such experienced users could save your practice time and aggravation because they help their coworkers adapt to new EHRs more quickly.

Reduce errors

Superusers could also assist your practice in other ways.

They could spot errors, reduce the severity of such mistakes, and even keep others from occurring.

Doing these things during training is important because such attention could prevent small mistakes from growing. After EHR programs have been implemented, superusers could continue assisting their coworkers and your practice.

Nobody’s perfect, and mistakes inevitably happen. But superusers could help your practice get more things right than wrong.

Provide better patient care

EHR software training helps your practice and its employees. Just as importantly, it helps your patients.

With software training, your staff members know how to use the system correctly and efficiently. Instead of spending their time wrestling with technology that puts them in bad moods, they have more opportunities to assist patients pleasantly and effectively.

Staff members who are trained in EHRs could use them to understand their patients’ needs and deliver solutions to assist them.

For ideas on how to use EHR software, practice management systems, and other technological tools to enhance your medical practice, consider contacting Eye Care Leaders. We can discuss and deliver solutions that could help you, your staff, and your patients