Charting Workflow Redesigns After EHR Adoption

With electronic health records touted as a way to transform healthcare delivery en masse, you can be sure that implementing them within your own practice will result in a slight tweak or two. And one area the adoption of EHRs is certain to impact is the crucial lifeline of office workflow.

After you've assessed your readiness for EHR adoption, the next step will be to chart your course of action. A nifty resource from the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Learning Consortium now endows you with a gift of clairvoyance - through diagrams and templates, the tool allows you to picture the workflow of several everyday tasks and responsibilities as they might appear under the newfound operating power of an integrated EHR system.

These workflow templates - fully editable in a powerpoint presentation which you can adapt to your specifications - cover the following critical operations:

• Patient check-in.
• Office visit.
• E-prescribing.
• Appointment scheduling.
• Laboratory orders.
• Referral generation.
• Office discharge.

The roadmap contains information on meaningful use objectives as well as background information on each of the operations listed above. The resource, according to information provided by HHS and the National Learning Consortium is "a tool used in the field today and recommended by 'boots-on-the-ground' professionals for use by others who have made the commitment to implement or upgrade to certified EHR systems."

Access the Workflow Redesign Templates here.
 

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