Are Your Patients Dissatisfied? Your EHR May Be to Blame

Patient satisfaction is at the heart of every successful medical practice. When patients are unhappy or dissatisfied, a practice’s reputation suffers. Unfortunately, technology tends to be a major culprit, specifically electronic health record (EHR) technology.

So how can you tell if your EHR is causing your patients to be unhappy?

Here are a few reasons why an electronic health record system fails to perform adequately:

The staff is not fully utilizing the EHR

Compliance and user acceptance are two major challenges when it comes to EHR adoption. Staff members who were used to older methods of working may find it difficult to switch to new technologies. Problems occur from those who refuse to adopt or do not use the new technology properly.

Workflow inefficiencies from a lack of proper EHR use means patients bear the brunt of mixed-up appointments, missing charts and records, poor follow-ups and so on.

Server-based EHRs suffer more downtime and support issues

Another problem can occur if your practice is using server-based EHR technology. Whenever the software goes down or is inaccessible, you must wait for the vendor to sort you out. If it’s a hardware problem in your office, you must wait for a technician to make repairs.

During this time, patients and staff get frustrated because they must work with paper while services such as billing and scheduling are offline. By the time your EHR is working again, you may have inconvenienced a large number of patients.

With a cloud-based EHR system, lengthy server downtime is never an issue. Because the software runs on the web instead of a local computer, there are no hardware or software problems to worry about. Users can securely log in from anywhere they have Internet connectivity.

Vendors providing cloud-based services continually monitor their systems and have redundant hardware in place. In the event something goes wrong, you’ll never have to wait hours or even days to get your EHR back online.

Poor integration

Sourcing different elements of your practice technology from different vendors may be a recipe for disaster. Because all the parts must work together, if one fails, it affects all the others.

When a problem occurs, getting assistance can become a headache – as vendors will blame other vendors for your problems. When one vendor offers a comprehensive suite of integrated services, such as EHR, practice management and billing, you have just one number to call to get the assistance you need.

EHR technology has the power to boost your practice or drag it down. With the right technology in place, all that’s left is the human side of your practice to ensure your patients are happy and satisfied.

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