EMR Success Stories - Bone & Joint Clinic

Location

Houston, Texas

Number of EMR Users

Six (6) physicians (including PAs), and twelve (12) clinical and support staff.

EMR Adoption Story

BJC had a PM system for twelve (12) years, but always worked with paper charting. Chris Williams, BJS's long-time IT Consultant, comments further.

"I always played a true support role for for BJC, and I never considered myself an innovator because that's not what they wanted. I saw lots of opportunity for improving technologies, but I never pushed. As an IT consultant, you learn to give clients what they want, and you learn to bite your lip and resist pushing for what they actually need."

"Since 2007, HNA has adopted lots of modern technologies, driven less by me and driven more by what BJC's competitors were doing. Because of the incremental imrovements we were making, and because of the talk of federal subsidy dollars, BJC warmed up to the idea of an EMR/PM system, and in early 2009 we bought a system. Among our other technology improvements, the EMR/PM system is now a major success story. I had my doubts about acceptance and use penetration, but I was surprised by the level of acceptance once we got into the project."

Were We to Do It Over Again

"For the EMR portion of our technology journey, I'm not sure we'd do anything differently. We did our homework before we even talked to an EMR/PM vendor, and when we finally did, we were in a position to evaluate feature and function objectively and in terms of our needs. Buyers of EMR/PM systems should take comfort in knowing that there are many good EMR vendors and systems on the market. The challenge is to find the system that's best for you, or in my case, my client. But if you approach the project from the perspective of unique needs, you'll find it's not that difficult."

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