Customer Service & Help Desk for Electronic Health Records (EHR)

Giva Customer Service Desk Improves EHR Adoption

Government stimulus dollars, meaningful use, P4P, medical home, standards, penalties and other market drivers are incentivizing independent hospitals, ambulatory care facilities, health systems and regional health information exchanges to adopt EHRs or EMRs.

Despite their value, EMR / EHR adoption remains in the early stages of adoption (HIMSS). Given the painful deployment process, providers remain skeptical of the benefits. The purchase, set up and maintenance process for EHR or EMRs requires extensive research and due diligence, total staff commitment, intensive training, disruption to workflow and downtime, and full support from a dedicated vendor or health system. Most systems are not "plug-and-play" or fully useful to suit the needs of a physician practice after basic installation. Some modifications must occur in order to adapt the practice workflow to the basic EMR or EHR system.

EHR Critical Success Factor – User Support Begins with the Help Service Desk

Many case studies cite the critical importance of support for successful multi-year, EHR deployments. Without support, technical assistance and training for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals there is little adoption of EMRs or EHRs. Without support, delays in response time frustrate staff and patients. Without support, delays also negatively affect adoption rates.

When implementing an EHR, EMR, e-prescribing or CPOE system, sponsors need to plan carefully the support process, starting with the help service desk (See EMR Adoption Guidebook). The help service desk can provide technical assistance, guidance and information on best practices to support and accelerate health care providers' efforts to become meaningful users. See the EHR support checklist & Resource List.

Giva's Difference: EHR / EMR Support Model

Giva's EHR/EMR support model is compliant with the standards and structures used in the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) framework to maximize your return on investment. EHR support requests from healthcare professionals typically involve patient workflow and process issues rather than technical problems associated with IT help desks. To reduce provider downtime, this requires the EHR support team to understand business and clinical processes as well as the underlying technology.