Getting the Team in an EHR State of Mind

Recently I had the opportunity to do something different, fun, and unexpected – I opened a team meeting with a music video.

I am currently leading an EHR implementation. Each month, I hold a meeting of the nearly 80 hospital staff members who are part of the project. The meetings combine sharing information about the project with each other, team building activities, and teaching them about change management, process improvement, and team dynamics techniques. I am always looking for a way to make each meeting interesting and memorable.

This month I wanted to initiate a good dialog in the meeting about a topic I wanted to address head-on: Why do Physicians Hate EHRs? And what are we, as a team, going to do about it to make our physicians love their EHR?

It reminded me of a great video crated by a physician right here in Las Vegas, ZDoggMD, whose videos I found through Healthcarescene.com. Viewing it again, it was indeed the perfect way to set the stage for this discussion. Fun, entertaining and such an accurate representation of how physicians feel about these applications.

The video itself got the team excited, motivated, and laughing – and led to one of the most engaging, productive, and thought-provoking conversations we have had on the project.

For the project leaders out there – I would recommend trying this type of technique with your teams.

For any physician or anyone else who has used an EHR and has not seen this music video, enjoy and share if it represents your point of view about EHR applications:

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About the author

Brian G. Rosenberg

For the past twenty years, I have been working with healthcare organizations to implement technologies and improve business processes. During that time, I have had the opportunity to lead major transformation initiatives including implementation of EHR and ERP systems as well as design and build of shared service centers. I have worked with many of the largest healthcare providers in the United States as well as many academic and children's hospitals. In this blog, I will be discussing my experiences and ideas and encourage everyone to share your own as well in the comments.

1 Comment

  • Having first used a very early EMR (orders, not results) back around 1973 as a teen volunteer in a hospital, I’ve long thought that one of the worst things in a hospital was to not have an EHR/EMR. That was until I found one hospital that has – but its ER didn’t. Then the ER did, but it wasn’t connected to any other part of the hospital. And regardless, when I spent several hours with a patient sent by her specialist to the ER for treatment waiting to get that treatment, told repeatedly by the nurses that they were waiting for pharmacy, then finally discovering that they never got the doctor’s orders from his office 5 miles away, the doctor being a recent department head. I finally called the doctor’s office, got the service, convinced them somehow that the doctor needed to call the hospital, and within 20 minutes of hanging up treatment started.

    Bad EHR’s, ones badly implemented, not connected to other departments, not sharing data with other health care systems, not having quick easy ways for doctors to send orders to the hospital from their offices, not using the system to dispatch lab, ekg, and other techs, it is mind boggling just how badly a modern hospital can do things when the bosses clearly don’t ‘get’ EHR!

    As to the video, it really is great!

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