Electronic Health Records For Dummies

Conducting site visits

The vendor demonstrations allow you to see the best and brightest features of the EHR products, but sometimes a presentation can feel too much like a sales pitch. Talk to other customers in their clinics, if possible. Although each clinic has its own special needs, the site visits provide an invaluable source of real-world experience that the demonstrations can’t duplicate.

You do not need to include all your colleagues and staff from the demonstrations in the site visits. Identify two or three members of your team to make the trip and then communicate your findings to the rest of the team.

If you can’t visit other clinics, then conduct phone interviews with their representatives. Telephone conversations with other sites are better than no interaction at all.

Figure 6-2: EHR vendor demonstration scoring sheet.

Here’s how to find other clinics to visit:

Vendor-approved references: Each vendor has a list of references and clinics willing to host site visits. Most will provide strong references; otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be on the vendor’s list. We’re not suggesting that the sites would hide anything from you, but the vendor is going to provide sites where the implementations have gone well.

Doing your own reconnaissance: Exploring local clinics is another ...