There’s a lot at stake when your organization decides to implement a new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. Bringing a new EHR online is more than just an update of your record keeping process—it’s a huge cultural shift for your organization. 

A flawed implementation can easily impact your revenue cycle, annoy your patients, and damage your relationships with other healthcare providers. 

If your EHR implementation goes poorly, you even run the risk of receiving fines from the federal government for substandard record keeping. 

You’ve probably heard that implementing a new EHR system is a time-consuming, frustrating process. And that can be true—too many EHR providers over complicate the implementation process and drag the transition on for weeks or even months. 

At BehaveHealth, we like to do things differently and that means delivering an easy implementation process to every customer, every time. 

Today let’s look at our top 5 tips for an easy implementation of your new EHR.

1—Don’t Reinvent the Wheel With Your Behavioral Health EHR

There’s quite a few EHRs out there that promise to be one-size-fits-all for large industries. For example, there are many “healthcare” EHRs on the market. But why should a behavioral health provider, especially one in the addiction treatment industry, share the same software with a dentist, a physical therapist, and a cardiologist? The differences between each of these fields is massive. They have completely different needs when it comes to an EHR. 

Choosing the right EHR for your organization means avoiding systems that aren’t tailored to your specific industry. You can skip the long, painful implementation period by avoiding EHRs that will need extensive adaptation to your industry by an implementation team that probably doesn’t even understand your organization’s workflows. 
At BehaveHealth, our EHR is specifically tailored to the needs of addiction treatment professionals and all of the workflows common to outpatient, residential, and detox facilities are already configured and ready to use. 

2—Focus On The Patients Before, During, and After EHR Implementation 

Switching to a new EHR is a major investment in the quality of care your organization provides to patients. 

Executing a major change is much easier when everyone on your team understands why the change is being made. Communicate the “why” behind your EHR implementation in explicit terms to your team. Emphasize how it will bolster patient engagement, improve patient outcomes, protect patient privacy, and create an easier billing process for patients to navigate. 

Remember to take a base-line measurement of the key performance indicators you expect to improve with your EHR implementation and report back to the team with proof of your return on investment. 

3—Make a Plan for the Transition to Your New Behavioral Health EHR

Don’t try to implement a new EHR at your organization without making a solid implementation plan. 

If possible, assemble an implementation team—or at least designate an implementation project manager—and choose an implementation date. Advise all staff members of the implementation process well before implementation day and provide strong leadership in modeling a positive, can-do attitude towards the change.  

4—Make Sure Your EHR Provider Offers Ample Training Opportunities

Training your team on using your new EHR can be tedious or it can be fun—it all depends on how well your EHR was designed and how well it suits your organization.

At BehaveHealth, we pride ourselves on our EHR’s ease of use and our quick start implementation process. We can train your team to use our EHR in three days in-person or five days over the web. Our individual training sessions generally wrap in 1-2 hours over video conference. We’ve never had a user come back for retraining—not yet at least!—and it’s because we’ve designed our product to be self-explanatory and easy to use from day one, even for people who don’t consider themselves a “techie.” 

5—Consider Implementing Your EHR in Stages

If you’re hesitant about making the switch, consider implementing your EHR in stages. Identify staff at your organization who thrive with new technology—they will love BehaveHealth’s cutting edge features—and let them test-drive the system before the roll-out. 

Designating EHR “super-users” can generate excitement for the switch and build capacity in-house for informal training and ongoing optimization.

Easy Behavioral Health EHR Implementation: Not an Oxymoron

Implementing your new EHR doesn’t have to be an exercise in frustration. 

At its core an easy implementation rests on two things: a well-designed EHR and a well-supported transition. At BehaveHealth, we deliver both. 

Reach out for your free demo today to see why our customers say it was easy to implement BehaveHealth’s EHR at their addiction treatment center.