Utilizing an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system in your practice is key to maximizing productivity and optimizing workflows. Without an EHR, practice staff simply will possess the tools they need to maximize profits, provide high quality care and create the best patient health outcomes.

Any old software will not help your practice achieve these goals, however. To truly maximize the benefit attained, the EHR system must be set up with the unique works of your particular practice in mind, The following three tips will help you get the most out of your EHR:

1. Eliminate workflow chokepoints

The first step to optimizing your EHR system is to take a close look at how it interacts with your workflows. Your IT department will need to be heavily involved, in order to thoroughly examine the entire care process as your staff care for patients, in order to identify any areas where the chokepoints are serving as a bottleneck to productivity.

These issues might include something like starting each appointment a few minutes late. While one or even two late appointments might not seem like much of an issue, the wasted time does add up, with the practice ultimately ending up with less time to see patients. This kind of timing issue can be absolutely disastrous in the long run.

Finding such an issue will likely prompt you to change the way your staff handles initial patient contact. The EHR system can help; the system can be used to enter information quicker and with fewer errors. Slowly but surely, you will catch up on timing, and have more time available in the day to see more patients. Dragon Medical One is an ultra secure and affordable cloud-based speech recognition solution.

2. Customization

To truly get the most out of your EHR, you need to invest in a system that is flexible enough to allow for customizations that fit the unique workflows of your practice. The best way to find such a system is to sign up with a vendor that has a proven track record of providing a user friendly software with an easy to sue interface.

The templates that are included in the system should be customizable, to allow you to make the most of your time spent generating reports. Other customizations include the keyboard shortcuts. Practice staff should be encouraged to both use the default shortcuts, as well as create their own that suit the way they like to work. Staff should also be encouraged to use the speech recognition feature, should the system include one.

3. Patient Portal

Patient portals are another must have aspect of EHR systems. Rather than having staff waste time collecting and entering massive amounts of patient information into the system on a daily basis, practices can implement a patient portal to allow patients a form of self service, where they can log in and enter their information themselves.