The Essential Guide to EHR Value & Sustainability

An EHR is an investment in your organization’s future. As cost, quality, and regulatory pressures continue to mount, it’s vital to select a vendor that places you on the path toward long-term sustainability.

Look for these necessary qualities in your EHR:

• An EHR must support quality. The best EHRs now embed Clinical Decision Support directly into their software through evidence- and experience-based content, protocols, and care pathways. This makes high quality care part of standard clinical practice and it reduces unnecessary and costly variation.

• An EHR must enhance physician and clinician satisfaction. All caregivers deserve more intuitive and usable software, including mobile tools that are as easy to use as their favorite apps. Vendors should be using software development concepts like Agile development, User-Centered Design, physician focus groups, and usability testing.

• An EHR must produce new revenue (and optimize existing revenue). Chronic care and disease management tools are a must, and your EHR needs a modern analytics solution with real-time monitoring of your organization’s financial and clinical performance. These solutions should be native to the EHR — not bolt-on, aftermarket products.

• An EHR must cut costs, not add to them. Eliminate avoidable costs like penalties for readmissions and hospital acquired conditions, while maximizing reimbursement bonuses under MACRA. Automated alerts can help your clinicians detect and address emerging issues before they become critical.

• An EHR must drive greater efficiency. Integrated analytics can help you promptly detect and eliminate inefficiencies, including gaps in care. The most effective analytics solutions will help you visualize your data.

• An EHR must provide a strong platform for interoperability. In today’s healthcare landscape, it’s essential to have an EHR that delivers standards-based interoperability to connect across the continuum of care. The most reliable and cost-effective approaches are based on a “one-to-many” model that allows you to securely exchange data with a large number of third-party systems without custom-coded, one-off interfaces.

“It’s time for health IT consumers to demand proof from vendors that the cost of their software produces comparable value.”