Comparing EMR Consulting Providers: What to Look for in Your Next Partner

Electronic medical records (EMR)—also referred to as electronic health records (EHR)—allow healthcare organizations to electronically access, use, and exchange patients’ health-related information in safer, more efficient, and more effective ways while also enhancing their facilities in meaningful, tangible ways. To realize the benefits, though, the EMR system must be fruitfully implemented, integrated, and optimized—which is exactly what partnering with the right EMR consulting company can do for the healthcare organization.

So, when you realize that your current EMR consulting company isn’t meeting all of your needs, it can be frustrating as you know that there’s a better way to maximize the system’s capabilities while streamlining usage for your hospital teams. If you’re considering moving away from your regular, go-to EHR consulting firm, here’s guidance on what to look for in your next partner.

#1 Make a List About Your Current EMR Partnership

When feeling a sense of dissatisfaction about a current vendor, you may not have tried to articulate precise reasons why quite yet. When you’re considering a new EMR consulting company, though, that information can be very helpful in making the best selection for going forward. So, make a list of what’s fallen short for you in your current situation and how you’d like your next experience to be different. Also, list what has gone well with your current EHR partnership because you’ll also want those characteristics in your new EHR consulting company.

#2 Get Recommendations for a New EMR Consulting Company

Now create a second list: recommendations for a new EMR consulting company. Ask for recommendations within your organization as well as through other trusted entities in your industry. Besides compiling a list of names, watch for ones that repeatedly show up; perhaps put an asterisk by those names each time someone recommends them to create a short list of desirable EHR consultant candidates.

#3 See How Your Two Lists Dovetail

Investigate the EHR consulting firms on your shortlist by reviewing their websites. At a high level, do they address the items on your wish list that you created in step one? Look, for example, to see if they have the types and degree of experience that you need to take your hospital’s EHR system to the next level and have staying power for the future. Do they demonstrate expertise with the most modern technologies, including with your vendor of choice? When looking at their blogs, does it appear as if they keep up with industry trends and show a keen awareness of its direction and possibilities?

#4 Contact a Company With EMR Consultants Rising to the Top

Although you can gather plenty of insights by talking to other professionals about their experiences and recommendations—and by analyzing information found on the websites of an EHR consulting company—you’ll also want to communicate directly with ones of interest.

This helps to show how responsive they are to inquiries and gives you a chance to note how well they listen, how clearly they explain their services, and how thoroughly they answer your questions. Although technical knowledge and abilities are hugely important, so is the ability of the EHR consulting company to provide top-quality customer service.

Also, pay attention to whether the EHR consultant firm has your best interests in mind or whether they seem to be pushing a particular product that may not actually be optimal for you. This may be especially important to note if your healthcare organization is looking for an EMR consulting company to help determine if you should change software vendors.

#5 Confirm the Quality of Professionals

Once you’re satisfied with and excited about a particular EMR consulting company, you’ll also want to have an understanding of the EMR professionals they use. How do they source them? Vet them? How does the selection process work? How quickly can they start? Will they be available on-site, remotely, or both?

Why Choose HealthTECH Resources as Your New EMR Consultants

Our boutique-style agency is the experienced choice with more than twenty years of helping healthcare organizations in the United States to maximize their use of technology and more quickly realize their return on investment.

HealthTECH Resources provides the full spectrum of services for top EMR systems:

• Epic
• Oracle Cerner
• Allscripts/Altera
• MEDITECH
• NextGen

Professionals in our network provide unmatched levels of service in their niche areas of expertise and are available as EMR consultants, contract-to-hire professionals, and permanent placements. Niche specialties include the following:

• Guidance in choosing the right vendor for your precise needs
• Overall project management to free up your in-house team to continue doing what they do best and keep your current projects moving
• Cybersecurity, which is increasingly more important to address to protect both patients and your healthcare organization
• Training by providing engaging and interactive sessions after gathering inputs about your unique facility workflows
• User-friendly process documentation for use in training programs and for reference materials that you can continue to use after a new system goes live
• Complete EMR implementation services: working alongside your team while setting goals, tasks, timelines, and deadlines; addressing workflow challenges; and much more
• Integration and optimization expertise to identify pitfalls, craft workarounds, and customize the application in streamlined ways that dovetail with your usage
• Cutover services as EMR consultants gather insights from key stakeholders, test the setup, address punch list items, verify completion of all tasks, and more before assisting with the actual application cutover
• Data cleaning and migration to ensure data integrity and close gaps between the current software and your new one

To discuss your specific needs and how we can help, reach out to us online or by calling (602) 903-7961.