Importance of EHR Optimization


“Optimization requires a tailored, multipronged strategy that incorporates an organization’s clinician-identified pain points, clinical informatics and technology resources, and clinician and leadership buy-in.”


— National Library of Medicine. Electronic Health Record Optimization and Clinician Well-Being: A Potential Roadmap Toward Action

Optimizing electronic health record (EHR) application allows healthcare organizations to:

➔ Maximize investment in the technology and reach a return on investment more quickly. An optimized EHR application dovetails workflows to each unique process, streamlining and improving efficiencies and productivity, thereby reducing the administrative burden.

➔ Allows healthcare organizations to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving industry. A properly optimized system can enhance data accuracy and security, increase system adoption rates, and more.

➔ Reduce physician burnout by eliminating unwieldy systems, helping retain more medical professionals and improve patient outcomes. This strengthened medical staff can create better patient outcomes, which can lead to greater patient satisfaction.

If your healthcare organization is ready to explore flexible EHR optimization, customized to your specific needs and specifications, please reach out to discuss your project today. Or, call us at (602) 903-7961.


CIO or IT Director Needing EHR Optimization Services?

Our specialized consultants can help you implement, optimize, and manage your healthcare IT systems efficiently.

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What Is EHR/EMR Optimization?

EHR/EMR optimization is the process of improving an EHR system to enhance efficiency, usability, and patient care. It streamlines workflows by reducing inefficiencies and ensures seamless access, allowing healthcare staff to work more effectively.

Optimization involves a thorough analysis of the current system to identify friction points that can create inefficiencies, reduce revenue, and act as barriers to optimal patient outcomes. The optimization process solves these problems, one by one, to streamline workflows, facilitating smooth access to medical records in role-based ways for patients and medical providers and creating opportunities for even better patient care.

EHR/EMR optimization goes beyond identifying and addressing pain points and problems, also seeking opportunities for innovative ways to make a healthcare system more effective, scalable, and aligned with the organization’s goals.


“Optimization is the process of continually improving a standing EHR using data analysis through real-time feedback and a focus on efficiency of patient outcomes, workflow, and sustainability.”



Key Benefits of EHR Optimization

  • Enhanced efficiency: Optimized systems can cut manual charting and documentation time, reducing the administrative burden and improving clinical efficiency. Patient records can seamlessly be made available in role-based ways, facilitating communication among key parties.
  • Simplified patient care coordination: Streamlined communications and data available across multiple locations and providers can simplify care coordination for a better, safer patient experience and outcome. Charts, diagnoses, prescriptions, test results, and other vital information is compiled into one single, easily accessible platform.
  • Cost savings: Through streamlined usage, efficient reporting, reduction in errors and redundancies, the ability to collaborate across locations, and much more, EHR/EMR optimization can reduce indirect costs.

HealthTECH Resources provides skilled, experienced EHR/EMR professionals for:


Epic Optimization
Oracle Cerner Optimization


Altera Allscripts Optimization
MEDITECH Optimization


NextGen Optimization 
Greenway Optimization


Common Challenges in EHR/EMR Systems

➔ Poor system usability and workflow inefficiencies: When the application isn’t optimized well, then time is wasted (and time is money). This typically includes inefficient workflows but isn’t always limited to that problem.

Solution: Streamline workflows to eliminate wasted time and improve efficiency.


➔ Data interoperability issues: Interoperability is a key benefit of well-optimized EHR systems, allowing data to be smoothly exchanged among providers and organizations. NOT having smooth interoperability is a common issue needing to be addressed.

Solution: Enhance integration for seamless data exchange among providers.


➔ Provider frustration and burnout: When EHR systems are inefficient and time-consuming to use, it naturally causes provider frustration — with workflow and other design problems contributing to physician burnout.

Solution: Improve system usability and design to reduce administrative burdens and medical errors.


“The consequences of this burnout to healthcare may be expressed as major medical errors, poor quality of care, safety incidents, reduced patient satisfaction, and primary-care workforce turnover.”



Key Strategies for Successful EMR/EHR Optimization

Successful EMR/EHR optimization involves professional analyses, careful planning, and input from relevant stakeholders. HealthIT.gov recommends workflow process mapping, which can highlight both inefficiencies and areas where the setup works particularly well: clarifying processes, identifying bottlenecks, and serving as blueprints for the future.

Carefully select multidisciplinary stakeholders — perhaps a team of five to eight people — to map workflows effectively. Include at least one neutral facilitator, supported by management resources.

Specific EMR/EHR optimization strategies recommended include:

  • Workflow customization: No two healthcare organizations are the same, and their EMR/EHR optimization strategies shouldn’t be alike, either. Leveraging insights gained through systemic analysis, our experts seamlessly mesh workflows and EHR processes. They carefully select who has access to particular pieces of data, secure patient information availability at each usage level, and ensure that each level is as streamlined as possible.
  • User training and support: Our professionals design interactive training tailored to each type, document relevant processes, gather post-training feedback, manage change resistance, and provide ongoing support after optimization.
  • Interoperability enhancements: Our EMR/EHR optimization professionals integrate technology with other healthcare systems for seamless data sharing and communications. This can include a deep dive into current data with decisions made about what data to clean and migrate, what to archive, and so forth with streamlined, interoperable communications kept at the forefront of decision-making.
  • Automation and AI integration: When optimizing the EHR system, best practices include using automation for documentation, reminders, and analytics — automating whenever it’s practical to prevent medical, financial, and other errors from occurring and limit risk. According to the American Medical Informatics Association’s AMIA Joint Summits on Translational Science EHR report, “AI technologies have been successfully applied to clinical practices such as diagnosis processes, treatment protocol development, personalized medicine, drug development, and patient monitoring and care.”
  • Data security and compliance updates: EHR optimization must ensure that the system meets HIPAA and other regulatory requirements. This requires a thorough cybersecurity assessment and ongoing monitoring to ensure continued security and a forward-looking approach to remaining compliant with evolving regulations. This includes compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule and its administrative, physical, and organizational safeguards and policies and procedures.

How EHR Optimization Improves Patient Care & Provider Efficiency

For Healthcare Providers

Real-time access to unified patient health information (including a patient’s history) enables more accurate diagnoses, effective prescriptions, and improved patient health management. More coordinated treatments can then lead to improved patient health outcomes.


For Patients

Enhancing EHR systems doesn’t just benefit providers — it also empowers patients to take a more active role in their healthcare. Optimized patient portals improve access to personal health records, lab results, and communication with providers.


Choosing the Right EMR/EHR Optimization Partner

When choosing an EMR/EHR optimization partner, prioritize experience and tailored solutions. Here are some key factors to consider:

  • Look for a provider with a proven track record.
  • Ensure that they offer the specific services you need and can customize their approach to fit your organization.
  • Ask about their expert vetting process and how they match consultants with healthcare teams.

Key Qualities of a Reliable EMR/EHR Optimization Partner

Selecting the right EMR/EHR optimization partner is critical for maximizing your healthcare organization’s investment and operational effectiveness. Key factors to consider include:

✔ Proven Industry Experience: Choose a partner with a robust track record in delivering successful EMR/EHR optimizations for diverse healthcare organizations.

✔ Customized Solutions: Seek vendors who offer tailored strategies aligned specifically with your organization’s unique operational requirements and goals.

✔ Comprehensive Support and Responsiveness: Evaluate vendors based on their ability to provide proactive problem-solving, timely responses, and effective ongoing support, ensuring your organization can maintain efficiency and productivity.

✔ Transparent Communication and Reliability: Prioritize partners known for clear, transparent communication and consistent reliability in meeting project milestones and expectations.

✔ Scalability and Efficiency: Look for a partner whose solutions enhance your organization’s capacity for growth and efficiency, allowing you to scale effectively without disproportionate resource increases.


Why Choose HealthTECH Resources for EHR/EMR Optimization

Here at HealthTECH Resources, our EHR consulting specialists can help you review your in-house team to determine where skills gaps exist, augmenting them with top-tier professionals with the niche specialties required. Or, if you’ve already gone through this process, let us know your needs, and we’ll fill the gaps with consultants, contract-to-hire professionals, and/or permanent placements.

When you’re ready to reap the benefits of optimizing your EHR system, please connect with us by filling out our online form or calling us at (602) 903-7961. Our EHR consulting agency has decades of experience, as we specialize in just one niche: staff supplementation for EMR, EHR, and healthcare payer systems, and we meet even the most stringent deadlines. Choosing HealthTECH Resources means partnering with dedicated professionals focused on your immediate success and long-term growth.


CIO or IT Director Needing EHR Optimization Services?

Our specialized consultants can help you implement, optimize, and manage your healthcare IT systems efficiently.

Trusted by leading healthcare organizations across the country — Get a response within 24 hours.

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EHR Optimization FAQs

Optimizing your electronic health records involves taking a granular look at the system workflows and finding opportunities to improve the application’s usage. At a high level, effective EMR optimization makes the system more efficient and cost-effective while streamlining end-user navigation and data retrieval. The end result helps your healthcare organization to provide better patient outcomes. Ease of use also helps to prevent physician burnout.

In addition, data can be accessed more easily and securely across multiple locations and providers on a single platform. This streamlines collaborative efforts when treating a patient and reduces the potential for medical errors. This enhances healthcare organizations’ ability to protect patient safety. Plus, having the ability to get a fully up-to-date and complete medical history allows doctors to be aware of a patient’s allergies and helps them to avoid prescribing a medication that would interact negatively with ones already being taken.

Ease of report generation allows healthcare organizations to more easily stay in compliance. Trends can arise from other reports that can help with research and quality improvement. From a financial perspective, well-optimized EHR systems are likely to have more rapid returns on investment for your healthcare organization.


EMR optimization can help to maximize the seamless use of patient portals—thereby boosting the quality of doctor-patient communications. Plus, tools embedded in the systems can contribute towards preventative care, which is key to managing physical and mental health conditions. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in their report, “An Interactive Preventive Care Record,” prevention techniques—such as immunizations, preventive medications, and counseling—are highly effective in maintaining patients’ overall health, extending their lives and improving its quality. When this reveals treatable or reversible conditions, mortality from major chronic diseases can be lowered by 15 to 30 percent.

Americans, however, suffer from a “prevention gap.” Barriers, such as lack of knowledge, limited motivation, and logistical issues, have helped to play a role in this fact: Americans only receive about half of recommended care. Well-crafted EHRs, though, can inform, educate, and remind people of recommended preventive care while also offering guidance when information is inconsistent and directing people where to get additional relevant resources.

Also, because members of healthcare teams can all see the same, real-time health information, including a patient’s history, they can better diagnose, prescribe, and otherwise manage patients’ overall health.


EMR optimization streamlines end users’ usage, giving them the ability to efficiently navigate patient information efficiently—which helps to reduce frustration and the burnout that often follows. As clinicians have ready access to precisely the information they need, they can have a higher positive impact on patient health outcomes. Plus, EHR systems can help to prevent information overload by reducing the presence of information that medical teams don’t need.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), in their journal article, “Electronic Health Records, Communication, and Data Sharing: Challenges and Opportunities For Improving the Diagnostic Process,” cites numerous studies that reveal the challenges associated with data overload and fragmented information delivery. Some solutions are as follows:

  • Batch messaging related to routine care to avoid email/messaging glut.
  • Prioritize critical pages, allowing physicians to read routine ones later.
  • Restructure EHRs to support decision-making and diagnoses.
  • Integrate patient data, such as test results, labs, notes, and images, to more easily see the full picture; display this information in more clinically relevant ways.
  • Review auto-populated data and consider if alerts or notifications would help to avoid information bloat.
  • Physicians could then self-select what to review and when. Streamline ordering and collecting processes and expedite results for labs and tests.
  • Use wheels! Put laptops, computers, tablets, phones, and other technologies used to access EHR data on wheels for morning rounds.
  • Ensure physician training is complete and up to date to streamline usage.

Each healthcare organization has its own processes, and it takes professional analysis to determine how to create EHR workflows to seamlessly match those processes for the most efficient use. Although it’s tempting to make changes on the go to solve immediate challenges, effective EHR workflows are created through careful planning and input from all relevant stakeholders. Gather information about what works especially well and where inefficiencies exist. According to HealthIT.gov, workflow process mapping is key to clarifying processes and identifying bottlenecks, serving as blueprints for the future. Because this will be a multidisciplinary process, thoughtfully identify the stakeholders for a comprehensive map. Who participates in what activities? Who will benefit from each of the improved processes directly or indirectly? Determine the tasks, who is involved, the steps needed to complete the tasks, and the desired outcomes. HealthIT.gov suggests a team of five to eight people to create the mapping, which may include patients; someone who is not responsible for the processes being discussed should facilitate with management providing resources and support.

Once new, optimized EHR workflows are put into place, all types of end users must be appropriately trained. In-house teams may not have enough time, given their current duties, and may not have the specialties required.


EMR optimization best practices include:

  • Carefully choosing who has access to particular pieces of data
    • Availability of patient information should be securely managed at each level of usage
  • Make sure all levels of usage are as streamlined as possible
  • Automate, whenever possible, to help prevent human error and otherwise limit risk.

Experts should capture relevant process documentation for manuals with engaging, interactive training programs designed for each end user type in your healthcare organization. Gather feedback, post-training, and answer all user questions. When the application goes live, post-EMR optimization, ensure expert support. You may decide to offer super user training, in-house IT professionals can offer this support, or hire qualified EHR professionals. Also, make sure you educate patients on changes in portals.