You are most likely aware of the crucial need to have the right EHR system for your practice. It's not just some luxury tool, it’s a necessity. However, many available EHR solutions are not useful and sometimes just downright frustrating. These negative effects might extend to patient care, affecting the efficiency of your practice and even the satisfaction of staff.

If you’re experiencing such frustrations with your current EHR system, you’re not alone. Take a closer look at some of the pitfalls you can avoid when making the right choice for your practice’s next EHR. Whether you're considering switching EHR systems or want to understand how your current system measures up, this guide will provide valuable insights.

1. Integration Issues

Perhaps the biggest pain point of so many EHR/EMRs today is that they are not integrated well with other third-party applications. Medical practices today depend on a large number of specialized tools that manage aspects of their operations, from billing and scheduling to image management. If these tools do not communicate with the EHR effectively, the result would be workflow disruption and frustration at the very least leading to increased data-entry errors.

At Phoenix Ortho, we believe integration is imperative for keeping your practice running seamlessly. That's why we've designed Phoenix Go to integrate with 96% of all third-party applications. Our system supports industry standards such as HL7 and API, which ensures seamless integration with all your tools.

What does this mean for your practice?

-       Seamless flow of data: Your information from the scheduling system, billing software, imaging tools, and more will automatically flow directly in Phoenix Go. This removes the need to manually input data, minimizing the chances of errors.

-       Saves a Great Deal of Time: The automated data sharing between systems gives your staff freedom to focus on caring for patients instead of juggling multiple software interfaces.

-       We give you more comprehensive patient records: All patient information, regardless of its source, is recorded in one place - that’s such a relief because it allows you to have access to each patient's history and care.

2. Customer Support

EMR and EHR systems are complicated, yes, and problems can pop up with all systems. When an issue arises, you need immediate and informed EHR support available to come to your aid.

Unfortunately, most EHR systems do not have a responsive support team. These are some of what you can expect from these mediocre systems:

- Long wait times to reach a support representative

- Inconsistent quality of support, with some reps lacking in-depth knowledge of the system

- Limited availability, especially outside of standard business hours

- Difficulty escalating complex issues to higher-level support.

These support issues often create costly downtimes, frustrate employees, and even impact patient care because the critical functions of EHRs are not available when needed.

We've made customer support a critical component of all Phoenix Ortho services, and we know that when support is needed, it must come in a timely and effective way.

Here's what that support looks like:

-       Award-winning support team: In addition to our support personnel who are technologically proficient, we understand the needs of an orthopedic practice. Most of our support team have backgrounds in health care, which means they speak your language well, and you can count on them.

-       Lightning-fast response times: With an average wait time of less than 1.5 minutes, you never have to be left hanging when you call us.

-       7am to 7pm Central Time availability: Orthopedic care doesn't stop at 5 PM, and neither does our support. Though our “open times” are not 24 hours we have been known to work around the clock when one of our client’s servers crashed and they needed access to Phoenix Ortho files.

-       Tiered support system: Although most issues are resolved during the first call, there exists a well-defined escalation pathway for more complex problems, ensuring that you consistently receive the level of expertise required.

-       Proactive support: We don't just wait for your call when there's a problem. Our team monitors the performance of your system and very often fixes potential problems before they can affect your work.

3. System Downtime Issues

Even today, with the many digital advancements, system downtime can very well bring an otherwise fully functional ortho practice to a standstill. How? Users of many other EHRs report frustrating experiences of sudden power outages, slow system performance during peak hours of the day, and scheduled maintenance that disrupts practice operations. These issues may lead to the following:

-       Delayed patient care

-       Increased wait times and patient frustration

-       Staff overtime to catch up on documentation

-       Potential revenue loss

One non-negotiable with orthopedic and PT practices, where efficient patient flow is important, is system reliability. You shouldn’t deal with anything less than excellence. We built Phoenix Go with reliability and efficiency in mind, excellent infrastructure, proactive monitoring, intelligent scheduling, and rapid response, always set and always available.

4. Training Your Staff

EMR systems are powerful tools, but with that power comes complexity. Many practices complain about:

-       No training, leaving the staff struggling with the system.

-       No ongoing training options as new features are added to the Software.

-       The costs for training sessions are too high

-       Training that doesn't address the specific needs of orthopedic practices

Such training gaps may result in underutilization of the features of the EMR, increased frustration among staff, and possible errors in documentation or billing.

We strongly believe that comprehensive, ongoing training is critical to achieving the full value of your EMR/EHR investment, we ensure that in the following ways:

-   Thorough initial training: Once Phoenix Go is up and running, comprehensive training on the system specific to your needs and workflow is provided.

-       Unlimited continued training: Unlimited training with us is free. You can use the training resources whenever you are in need, when your needs grow, or when another member has joined your organization.

-       Multi-format learning

-       Orthopedic-specific focus: We ensure all training focuses on the needs of orthopedic practices so that you can learn how to use Phoenix Go in ways that really benefit your specialty.

-       New feature education: With every new feature and update we release, we provide associated, focused training designed to help you get the most from it.

5. Saving Your Work

Above all, users of EMR systems dread nothing more than losing work due to system limitations making it impossible to save the work in progress. Time-outs without any warning will erase unsaved work or lack automatic save features, thus requiring saves from its users quite frequently.

These would lead to time wastage, increased frustration among personnel, and lots of errors by the users in trying to redo the lost work from their memory.

We know your time is precious because each opened document is important to you. So, by default, Phoenix Go looks out for your work automatically to save all your documents. You’ll also find the autoSave, multi-window, and smart timeout management very handy.

Phoenix Go EHR is the Choice.

Choosing the right EMR for one's orthopedic practice is highly important, affecting every aspect of the functional operation. While integration, support, reliability, training, work preservation, customization, and mobile access have been the issues with most EMR systems, Our Phoenix Go is actually built to challenge and overcome these problems head-on.

With our focus on orthopedics, we understand the needs of your practice very well. Phoenix Go is designed with seamless integrations, fast support, comprehensive customization, and mobile access that will allow you to be more efficient and deliver better patient care, all while eliminating much of the frustration that normally accompanies an EMR system.

Don't let the limitations of mediocre EMRs hold you back. Discover today the Phoenix Go advantage and take the first step toward a more efficient, effective, and satisfying EMR experience.