Electronic Health Records For Dummies

Working with your vendor rep

When you need some help with your system, your first call should be to the vendor rep to report your problem and see what, if any, solutions, she can offer you as part of your existing support package. Many of your ongoing support issues concerning tweaking and improving your system will be supported by the vendor per the terms of your contract. For support that isn’t spelled out in your contract, ask your rep.

Your vendor rep has likely seen all possible problems that could pop up with your system and can serve as a helpful resource. If the problem is more of a technical issue, then try to drill down the parameters of what is not working before you contact the rep. That way, you won’t waste a lot of vendor support time attempting to diagnose the problem. Obviously, this isn’t always feasible (sometimes you simply won’t know what is wrong), but alerting the rep that your problem lies with a specific part of the system or how you use it streamlines your support time. The problem could be one of the following:

System: Many EHRs offer online support to report problems or bugs by setting up a help desk (see Figure 16-2), which is an online form you can fill out and send to the vendor with the click of a button. You will also have a (hopefully) 24/7 help line that you can call. Alternately, if you think your rep will get the problem fixed faster, keep him or her on speed dial.

The caveat with vendor support issues is that the responsibility to follow up ...