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Press Releases
Electronic Health Record Workflow Management Systems: The Next Step in EHR Evolution
Nov 1, 2009
Charles Webster,
MD, MSIE, MSIS
Chief Medical Informatics Officer
EncounterPRO Healthcare Resources, Inc.
Atlanta, Georgia
Implementing an Efficient Electronic Health Record
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are becoming more than just electronic patient documentation systems; they are evolving into tools that assist physicians in managing the patient care tasks they perform for major types of patients they see. These systems allow providers to analyze, manage and optimize the work that has to be performed, as well as to direct and to delegate it to others. EHRs based on a Workflow Management System (WfMS) accomplish this by offering a way for the user to customize workflow to practice specialty, to local clinical and administrative processes and to user preferences. If an EHR can be instructed to do tasks in a customized sequence - automatically - based on who the patient is, why they came to the office, what care needs to be provided, when and where care needs to be provided, and how it best fits the office staffing, the EHR is not just a patient documentation system, it is an EHR Workflow Management System.
Workflow Management versus Mere Workflow
Most EHRs have basic task management functionality, yet very few are built upon a user-controllable WfMS "engine." "Workflow systems" and "Workflow Management Systems" are frequently confused and poorly differentiated, yet there is an important distinction. This distinction is particularly important to know if a physician is planning to automate his or her office and is in the market for an EHR. A Workflow Management System is a software application that stores and executes workflow (or process) definitions to create and manage workflow processes by facilitating interactions among users and applications. Users usually interact with workflow systems, not the WfMSs used to implement them. It is the underlying WfMS that allows a workflow system to be flexibly tailored to local processes and user preferences, and to be easily monitored and maintained by the user, not the computer software vendor. The less a user is dependent upon their EHR software vendor, the faster changes can be made and the less maintenance cost there will be.
