I recently met with some colleagues: doctors who practice Neurology and Family Medicine, who have not yet gone to EMR. There are two main reasons for this:

one) They are not sure where to start. Several of his friends have tried unsuccessfully to implement EMR in practice. In most cases, it was a lot of effort; some teams gave up as time went on, and others fell by the count. Some lost money and time on the project and then asked ‘no more’.

two) The failure rate among electronic medical record projects is estimated to be between 30 and 50 percent. At first I started with this high rate. But by asking, you will find someone who has had a bad experience, or someone who has. Calculating a true failure rate is difficult, especially when determining the difference between abandonment, an interruption of EMR system use, or a true failure, often reported by a software vendor.

Regardless of whether a situation is called abandonment or ‘true’ failure, the result is the same: money, time, heartache, and a practice that reverts back to the exclusive use of paper charts.

The main causes are divided into a few main areas:

Lack of commitment or leadership

Is there a champion doctor in your practice? Medical groups need to reach consensus and keep things moving, and without this, the smallest hit can have serious repercussions. The champion does not need to become an enthusiastic supporter of EMR, but he must accept the project. Once a staff begins to feel a lack of unity among the top level, things can start to unravel, with divisions in different camps either for or against EMR.

Ultimately, if the project fails, the entire team fails, not just the person who initially championed the cause. There is a possibility that a riot will spread among the group. There could be a single doctor or staff member who is foiling the project on purpose. They could be sowing doubt among neutrals or trying to escalate problematic situations. The champion must discover and reorganize these influences before they travel too far in the organization. The champion must also ensure that the lines of communication are working, with meetings scheduled before and after a go-live date, so that a system can be established quickly before a particular user gets frustrated and gives up.

Poor planning and implementation

This category covers the gamut from hardware and software issues to configuration design and implementation. An IT staff member should be on board or an outsourced technology consulting company should be involved in both planning and implementation. This could include planning, training planning, as well as product design and implementation stages. A dynamic schedule or other work breakdown structure should be in place to keep things on track. A simulation day is another real test. Together, these components nurture success, especially in a crisis. He hopes to have at least one.

The Internet Technology Advisor can also help with network hardware purchases, while trying to control overall system costs. Of course, that doesn’t recommend buying cheap stuff either. Controlling the costs of physical infrastructure can work against you in the end. Unless your office is small, consumer equipment available at retail stores may not be recommended. Get and stay current on service and maintenance agreements, including backup servers and switches. Failure to do so could reduce the effort of your practice.

without purpose

Some electronic medical record projects are in trouble from the start. If the goals for the future system are not outlined or understood, the chances of a successful plan being formed are low. Unrealistic expectations and unclear goals further reduce the chances of success. Often practices that do not maintain a clear understanding of the situation or enlist the help of experts could have avoided the problem of purposelessness. What do you want the EMR system to do? If you’re not sure what you ultimately want, you won’t be able to understand what your EMR system needs. If you get drawn into some software system in an Academy meeting, but without first understanding the product or the company.

Change management issues

Ask any expert who deals with the implementation of large technological projects. No matter what industry or business area, everyone talks about the ‘human factor’ as one of the main causes of project failure. Electronic medical records are no different. Many new doctors have grown up with the technology, even training at institutions that already use an EMR system. They won’t miss a beat. The same goes for younger staff members used to social media and texting. But some of the older doctors have to make a major adjustment. They may even have recently used the Internet or suffer from technophobia. Technology resistance can manifest itself in many ways, including rejection and withdrawal. Providing these employees with adequate training, preferably from their co-workers, is key to avoiding a learning curve that is too steep to achieve before launch day.

Some of the older staff members may need substantial training. A process must identify those who are being left behind, which requires further training. Your practice cannot afford to lack the critical buy-in of staff or the lack of skills necessary to successfully implement a project.

Workflow processes are also involved in change management. Inefficiencies in patient care will only be exacerbated on a digital platform. The launch date is not the date to discover that the new EMR system is not up to the standard that they have always done before. Proper technical planning can also help ensure there is a proper ‘fit’ between the needs of the practice and the EMR solution. This can mitigate failure factors such as unrealistic expectations about how long it will take for the EMR to work properly, loss of productivity in the clinic, and inappropriate customization. All of this can lead to software system abandonment and a perpetual search for the ‘perfect’ EMR solution that never gets done.