EMR and Healthcare – Ergonomics

Some time ago I was involved in a huge electronic medical records (EMR) roll-out that was project managed in such a way as to create evaluation teams with physician involvement.  This was a excellent way to evaluate all of the aspects of the EMR and get buy-in from the end customers who were going to be impacted the most by the change from paper to electronic records.

IT plays an important role, from understanding the individual physician’s workflow to knowing all of the pieces involved in the hardware.  The impact is huge.

Dubbed “ergonomics”, the placement of the computing equipment in the examination room, the posture of the physician, and the computing equipment in use .. they all have an impact, positive or negative, on the experience for the physician and the patient, and, in the end, how efficient and effective a physician can be at their job.  An inefficient physician means seeing less patients, which in turn means making less money for the practice.

This draft document was intended to be presented to each physician practice as part of their “go-live’ package, but certain elements got in the way.  I share this information here in the hopes that what was learned through an 8month long process could be useful for others.

Ergonomic White Paper – v5 DRAFT