Healthcare is growing more complex by the day as reports, health records, and practice finances are increasingly handled with electronic health records (EHR) systems. Now, specific skill sets are required to manage and optimize EHRs to ensure practices are optimizing their performance and reimbursements effectively. This is where successful EHR support comes into play.
Not everyone in a medical practice has those skills, so having a dedicated support team can help keep practice operations running smoothly. EHR support experts can provide workflow advice, explain tool capabilities, offer help on password resets, set up user accounts, and iron out application performance issues.
Benefits of a Dedicated EHR Support Helpdesk
A dedicated EHR support helpdesk is one of the best ways to troubleshoot your EHR systems after setup. Your staff will encounter snags as they learn the system, what it is capable of, and how best to use it.
EHR support desk personnel can get staff members past those hurdles quickly before they can slow down your practice’s billing, scheduling, or patient exams. Preparing them for those bumps in the road by providing expert means to solve them will also help with staff buy-in, an essential element in your EHR adoption plan.
What To Look for in EHR Support Services
- Look for a quality team (combine w/ below section, remove “key elements of support team” heading
- Add info about benefits of support services, link off to MA EHR services.
- Importance of EHR support, not all practices have the time / resources to dedicate to troubleshooting EHR issues. Outside team can be a key factor in maintaining your system.
A capable support team plays a vital role in any successful organization. Key elements any successful support team needs to stay on top of practice EHR systems include:
- Error message troubleshooting – Solve the glitch and save the day.
- Patient portal configuration – Get patients on-boarded smoothly.
- Custom EHR documentation building – Set up the forms that will fuel your EHR systems data collection.
- Staff training skills – The support team needs to be able to provide training to staff for workflows.
- Healthcare systems expertise – Whether it is easily integrated into your EHR or not, your support staff will need to know the systems.
Diving Deeper Into EHR Issue
Error Message Troubleshooting
Error messages are a sign something’s wrong, but practice staff won’t always know what the problem is. Whether the issue is a simple error or a more serious system problem, an on-demand support team member will have either a ready answer or the means to figure it out. If the error message is the result of a larger problem, a skilled EHR systems support team will be able to iron it out and get you back to work quickly.
Patient Portal Configuration
Patient portals provide patients immediate access to information about their health without the need to wait on the phone, for an email or text message. Portal functions have been shown to improve patient care and participation in their care— a big obstacle for many providers. For example, patients appreciate the convenience of being able to message the provider at any time. For many, use of web-based information and electronic communication is second nature.
That convenience and improved care quality require safeguards, however. Patient portals have to be secure and follow Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidelines protecting medical privacy, but also adhere to the 21st Century Cures Act’s “Open Notes” rule, which demands information such as consultation notes and lab report summaries are accessible to patients.
Configuring a secure patient portal can be tricky for your office staff, but it is routine for a competent support team. With support, your team can optimize and streamline this process to eliminate headaches.
Custom Documentation Building
An EHR tech support team can easily build custom documentation and templates tailored to your practice to make recording patient data quick and accurate after EHR implementation.
Practitioners often need specific requests or automated prompts built into their practice’s workflows to meet specialized needs. Providers who find themselves typing a lot of recurring text-based following visits or diagnoses can help limit EHR systems fatigue with customized templates that are easily applicable to different sections of the EHR.
Helpdesk experts can equip you with the tools you will need to document, verify, and authenticate patient information during and following a patient visit while demanding less screen time.
Staff Training
Our support team is just as skilled at teaching as doing.
Get your current staff up to speed on your new EHR system with expert training and enlist our experts to train new hires at your practice to keep everyone on the same page with the EHR.
Consultants can help prepare you for in-practice EHR training and provide remote teams for on-demand EHR assistance. As your practice grows or you begin participating in a new federal program, or new value-based contract and need your EHR to help you document the crucial benchmarks. The right support team can help optimize your EHR for performance and reporting – and will deliver the training needed for your staff to make use of the new reporting and tools.
Healthcare Systems Expertise
An effective EHR helpdesk team will be knowledgeable about the systems outside your EHR you may be using and how those systems integrate with it. While the Health Interoperability Roadmap has laid out a plan for getting healthcare systems to work together easily via standardization, our support helpdesk’s assistance will remain a necessity for a while yet.
Healthcare systems for billing, revenue cycle management, HR, finance, analytics, and remote patient management, to name a few, need to communicate smoothly with your EHR system to limit headaches and get the most out of your EHR optimization and remote patient management, to name a few, need to communicate smoothly with your EHR system to limit headaches and get the most out of your EHR optimization.
A smart EHR support team will point you to the best EHR vendor to ensure a smooth integration of all your systems when starting fresh. If you are already committed, they will know how to get the most out of your existing system.
The right experts can remote into your system, give workflow advice, and provide liaison assistance with vendor support staff, advocating for you with the EHR vendor’s technical experts.
Medical Advantage Can Help
Whether you need help setting up a new EHR, migrating to a new one, or unlocking improved workflows to maximize practice revenue, our “pay-as-you-go,” hourly EHR helpdesk solution can deliver the data your practice needs.
Our EHR solutions consultants leverage deep knowledge of EHR systems and the latest training to tailor your electronic health records system, improving your practice’s performance. Our team members have extensive experience in both the IT and healthcare spaces and are familiar with the challenges you face.
