Interoperability continues to make headlines and proves to be an important element for truly coordinated and connected healthcare. Navigating Cancer is committed to interoperability with other healthcare systems and we have a dedicated team of developers who work to help our clinic customers link our patient relationship management solution to their EMRs and Practice Management Systems. It’s been no small task, but it’s essential to our core belief that healthcare will be more efficient, effective and coordinated when providers across systems can access the same patient information in real time and patients’ health records are complete and accessible.
Our interoperability team recently completed a vendor-supported cloud EMR integration and the resulting infrastructure will allow them to support future integrations with a variety of other systems. We are excited about the potential benefits for our Care Management and Patient Link customers. With bidirectional integration – both to and from the EMR – clinics can become even more efficient and patient care can be better coordinated, in real time. Patient engagement, appointment schedules, triage information and more will all be up to date throughout systems resulting in coordinated and connected patient care.
We have completed integrations with a number of EMRs and we have learned a few things along the way:
- Make sure integration is a consideration from the beginning. If you leave it until the last minute there could be a negative impact on your workflow. By planning ahead you can get questions answered early and mitigate potential workflow disruptions before they become issues.
- If you are choosing a new EMR, ensure that the connectivity you already have in place between your systems will be maintained. You don’t want to have to face an issue again that you’ve already solved. If your systems can work in harmony, they will create value and efficiency.
- As you move forward with an integration with your EMR, make sure it’s bidirectional. A one way integration only gets information out of the EMR will result in some inefficiencies as you work to get information from other systems documented in the EMR.
Not sure what the next steps for your clinic are? Contact Navigating Cancer today!