Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Implementing An EHR: 5 Quick Tips

Dr. Jay Anders, the CMIO of EHR vendor MED3000, offered a few tips during a Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) session on implementing an EHR successfully:

1. Make a clear communication pathway. Everyone needs to know what’s going on, from the physicians to the receptionist.

2. Clearly identify the needs of every physician who is going to use the EHR. The needs of an internal medicine doctor aren’t the same as a dermatologist. Make sure the EHR meets those needs.

3. Get a physician champion for the EHR who will be responsible for talking about the project to peers and answering questions, and be the first person to implement it. Pay that person for his or her time spent in championing duties.

4. Some people need more time than others. Don’t let a resistant doctor stop the implementation. Develop a plan for dealing with resisters that includes how you’ll respond to negative comments, how to implement other colleagues despite the resister, and how to sell the benefits of the EHR to the resister.

5. Expect the EHR implementation to be time-neutral. Most EHRs don’t save time; their value is in improved patient care and documentation, which leads to better reimbursement.

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles