“Today is another valuable opportunity; not to alter the past, but to shape the future,” Alvin Conway, author of The Extinction Protocol, once said. In shaping the future of your urgent care center, you should look for an electronic health record (EHR) system with a proven track record of boosting financial success and providing valuable tools to improve patient outcomes.

The key to adding a system that best serves your patients and health facility is choosing one built on best practices. Depending on the size of your organization, comparing systems and technology may take several weeks or even months.  This process can be hastened by leveraging the learnings that come for your EHR vendor’s past client experiences.

Clients using Practice Velocity software benefit from years of proven development and implementation, specifically catering to urgent care centers. And PV’s second-to-none training team makes the transition as painless as possible.

Seek Feedback to Improve Productivity

Gaining insight about current challenges and asking for input on what would improve the processes in each department will help the EHR team ensure alignment between the center’s processes, people, and the system.

To assure an EHR is a “good fit” with your business, assemble a cross-functional team—everyone whose departments will interact with the system—including clinicians, operations, and billing. Smooth delay-causing bottlenecks in your center by implementing a system that is built to maximize flow. PV understands that speed is the number one way to optimize the efficiency of providers and staff (efficiency = number of patients per provider per hour) and to assume a positive patient experience (wait times are #1 complaint of urgent care patients).

An advantage of an industry-proven software solution like PV is that proven “best practices” baked into the system, can be implemented in your center by implementing the system.

Training: The Tools for Success with your EMR

Process management simplifies procedures, resulting in financial savings and more efficient workflow patterns that enable faster, appropriate care delivery. Most organizations will find at least one employee, most likely several employees, who need additional training. Well-trained employees are your most valuable asset.

Before rolling out the new facility EHR, make certain every employee understands his/her responsibilities and how to access help if he/she encounters a problem. Along with a well-designed onboarding policy that includes skill-development opportunities, every employee should have access to ongoing training and professional development resources.

Practice Velocity approaches training on several fronts. The team offers in-person training for free at PV headquarters each month. These sessions are for new or existing clients, and the sessions are continuously updated to reflect client feedback and updates to the software. Two trainers attend each session and cover administrative and registration functions. Trainees are also given optional time for VelociDoc EMR or billing training.

“We start simple and depending on the class go into more depth,” said Nathaniel Scalf, Client Services Training and Development with Practice Velocity. “Our level of VelociDoc knowledge is in-depth, so we can answer virtually any question that comes up.”

For ongoing training, Practice Velocity offers a multitude of help resources on its website. There are manuals and video tutorials, along with e-learning modules. Trainers can also remote into a client’s computer for training or visit the location, for a fee.

Organizations that invest time and financial resources to understand the unique needs of staff and patients position themselves to successfully roll out an EHR system. In fact, every step on the journey toward full EHR adoption — from research through pre-launch testing — is crucial to implementing technology solutions that will improve productivity, reduce operating costs and enable positive patient outcomes.