Coffee & Conversations Webinar Recap: Customizing Your EHR Workflows: DIY Solutions vs. Vendor Partnerships

When healthcare organizations experience limitations of their EHRs for automating complex workflows to meet business needs, they often face two options: build these customizations in-house or work with a vendor. This is the interesting debate we explored on our recent webinar, Customizing Your EHR Workflows: DIY Solutions vs. Vendor Partnerships. This webinar was the second in our Coffee and Conversations webinar series, which covers exciting and trending topics within the healthcare technology space featuring insights from medaptus subject matter experts.  

Here are key takeaways from the discussion, featuring Gary Bernklow, Senior Product Director; Malachi Charbonneau, General Manager; and Jeff Cibotti, Clinical Implementation Consultant at medaptus. 

1. Evaluation Factors  

There are a lot of things to consider when choosing to work with a software solution vendor or customize EHR workflows in-house:  

• Deployment time and long-term vision  

• Cost, resources and maintenance  

• Knowledge base, IT focus areas  

• Customization and scalability  

According to an article by Healthcare IT News, “too often, homespun programs are nothing more than a mishmash of manual workarounds to accommodate a growing set of deficiencies. As a result, staff members waste valuable time, introduce manual errors into workflows, and can eventually destabilize the software program.”  

“This speaks to what we’ve witnessed over time shadowing a lot of different healthcare organizations. They think they’ve created a workflow or customization but then start to add spreadsheets and manual processes. They hope to train folks but there’s a lot of turnover in the industry. What happens is these organizations start to introduce manual errors in that workflow and this eventually destabilizes the whole process,” said Malachi. 

2. Clinical Operations  

A recurring issue raised during the webinar was the inefficiency in clinical operations due to reliance on manual processes such as paper and spreadsheets. Many healthcare providers attempt to develop in-house solutions to optimize these workflows, but they often struggle to see these projects through to completion.  

EHR limitations were a major talking point, especially regarding complex workflows like patient assignments. Hospitals often plan to build custom solutions for these workflows, but due to resource constraints, these plans remain unexecuted. The consequences? Increased clinician burnout, decreased time with patients, and a continuation of manual operations that compromise both efficiency and care quality. 

Jeff shared, “We’ve had some hospitals tell us they’re going to build their own systems. But as Malachi alluded to, that’s a significant undertaking. You need to hire developers and maintain the solution. It ends up being costly and time-consuming.”  

3. Revenue Cycle: Infusion Auto-Coding 

Outpatient infusion coding, which is notoriously complex, is hard for organizations to do accurately and correctly using their EHR. 

Infusion comes with its own set of considerations for organizations looking to optimize their workflow in-house, such as:  

• Revenue needed for personnel and end-to-end testing. How will you get financing for this project?  

• Server space and hours needed to develop a solution (often 2500+). Does your staff have the time to dedicate to this?  

• Outlier situations. What happens if the only person trained in the system leaves, or is out sick? 

• There are approximately 15,000 NDC codes with more being created and updated daily. CDM codes update daily as well. How will your system keep up? 

“What we’ve seen with automated infusion coding is an 80% productivity increase. Prior to going live with medaptus coders or nurses needed to review every infusion to make sure it was coded accurately. It required 5 to 10 minutes per service. If you automate infusion coding with a vendor solution using the data that’s already in your EHR, you can reduce that productivity drain significantly,” said Gary. 

Wrap-Up 

As you can see, when it comes to EHR workflow customizations, there is a lot to consider. Will healthcare organizations embrace working with vendors to avoid costly and timely in-house enhancements, or will they continue with manual processes that impact patient care and revenue?