The Value of an Integrated Specialty EHR Approach

As many of you know, I’ve long been an advocate for the specialty specific EHR. There are just tremendous advantages in having an EHR that’s focused only on your specialty. Then, you don’t get things like child growth charts cluttering your EHR when you don’t see any children. Or taken the other way, you have child growth charts that are designed specifically for a pediatrician. This can be applied across pretty much every industry.
The reason that many organizations don’t go with a specialty specific EHR is usually because they’re a large multi specialty organization. These organizations don’t want to have 30 different EHR vendors that they have to support. Therefore, in their RFP they basically exclude specialty specific EHR vendors from their EHR selection process.
I understand from an IT support perspective and EHR implementation perspective how having 30 different EHR implementation would be a major challenge. However, it’s also a challenge to try and get one EHR vendor to work for 30+ specialties as well. Plus, the long term consequence is physician and other EHR user dissatisfaction using an EHR that wasn’t designed for their specialty. The real decision these organizations are making is whether they want to put the burden on the IT staff (ie. supporting multiple EHRs) or whether they want to put the burden on the doctors (ie. using an EHR that doesn’t meet their needs). In large organizations, it se...

Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 19, 2015 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: John Lynn Tags: EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare Interoperability HealthCare IT Ambulatory Surgery Centers GI EHR GI EMR gMed Specialty Specific EHR Source Type: blogs