Switching gears a bit: I was honored to be a co-presenter this year, on the final day of User Group.
My colleague and I were curious about who would show up on the last conference day, especially after the late night festivities the night prior (Huey Lewis And The News, and KC And The Sunshine Band).
Thankfully, folks did show for the 9 AM session, and didn’t leave in droves, either.
Good Cop, Bad Cop
Our talk focused on the importance of cooperation at the upper levels of the management team, if you want a successful EMR roll-out. As alluded to in The Leadership Secrets Of Joseph Stalin, inspired by Dr. Cephus Allin, this means melding “physician champions” and “practice administrators” into a cohesive, irresistible team.
The administrator-realist role…is a full-time occupation, like herding toddlers.
No matter what size organization you have, from 2 to 200+, if you want a smooth adoption of an EMR system, you need someone who can play hardball, and someone who can encourage: bad cop/good cop, Stalin/Mother Teresa, administrator/physician champion.
This is more an observation of human nature, and what has transpired in many implementations I’ve observed:
- Some physicians and staff will be all for the transition
- Some will be undecided
- Some will be either hostile or passive aggressively against it
The administrator-realist wears the project manager hat, and cracks the whip to get that last group squarely behind — or out of the way of — the EMR adoption train. That role is absolutely necessary, whether referring to the office manager in a small group office, or the COO of an MSO. It is also a full-time occupation, like herding toddlers.
But guess what? We physicians have an individualist streak a mile wide, and instinctively resent heavy handed tactics, even while we privately admit the need for them.
Enter The Physician Champeen
It’s not a new idea, designating a physician in the organization to champion the cause of the EMR. What follows is our take on why having one isn’t just a good idea, it’s critical to the success of your EMR endeavor:
1) Physicians Are Social Creatures, Individualism To The Contrary
You’ve seen this time and time again: when a company rep explains an EMR to a doctor, he gets a skeptical response, but when an EMR-using physician explains the same points to the doctor, it’s a revelation! It’s miraculous! Where do I sign?
This is even true if the EMR physician gives a less-than-perfect presentation. The company rep is often an IT person, and knows the system better than the doctor.
Why is the EMR physician’s presentation so much better received than the rep’s?
Because before they became individualist practitioners, doctors had already been socialized into a professional social structure: the medical profession, itself. They may have entered med school as God’s gift to the world, but they left it as part of the medical establishment, stripped down and built back up in a health sciences boot camp.
An organization gets only so many catastrophes before the doctors lose faith…Head off even one of them, and the champion has earned his keep for the year.
And what do you do, once you’ve been socialized? You listen real good to thems what have gone before you. Snarling surgical residents quake in their clogs when the senior attending stares at them.
An EMR-using physician, who has survived a system adoption process with all its struggles, has immediate street cred with his or her colleagues. Doctors will listen to a member of the fellowship, because that’s how professionally socialized members have been trained to act.
2. The Physician Champion Stays In And Acts Out
An organization should only need to have its head handed to it on a platter once…before it realizes the value of a physician champion.
The conventional idea of a champion sallying forth with The Flag Of EMR Truth overlooks another, key role: advising internally, amongst the IT and EMR administrative staff.
The external role is fairly clear:
- You demonstrate the software, preferably live in your busy office
- You educate patients, doctors, and organizations about it
- You help new users “get up to speed”
- in person
- by writing teaching material
- by creating AV tutorials, like Camtasia instructional videos
In essence, you show and expound upon the product, with the incomparable credibility of a colleague who’s been there, done that, and still is.
But the internal advisory role is arguable even more critical, especially from an organizational standpoint:
- Testing designs for viability, before release
- QA checks for glitches that only a doctor would appreciate
- Suggesting new features that would make doctors’ lives easier
Going back to the drawing board is a royal pain. An organization should only need to have its head handed to it on a platter once, by a group of irate docs, before it realizes the value of a physician champion who can save endless hours of software rewrites.
God forbid your docs utter that ultimate phrase of damnation:
Take it offline and give us back the last version until you fix it and get it right.
An organization gets only so many catastrophes before the doctors lose faith, and wander off in all directions into the dark. Head off even one of them, and the champion has earned his keep for the year, in user good will and saved IT staff headaches.
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