Should You Build Your Own EMR?

As a physician, you need to remain extremely proactive when it comes to complying with the healthcare regulations and minimizing the cost associated with patient care. In order to reduce the amount of paperwork and improve overall quality of care in a practice, it’s important to implement an EMR system which not only helps you generate revenue while substantially reducing the costs but also enables you to deliver  better patient care.

 Challenges associated with off-the-shelf EMRs

Many physicians today express disappointment with the usability and workflow features of their existing EHR system. In the healthcare industry, especially, where natural flow of information is utmost necessary for better patient care and smooth working of processes, the EMR system should be able to efficiently perform its intended function. At the same time, it should provide easy integration with other systems as well.
While you can get access to numerous off-the-shelf EMR templates with out-of-the-box features from different vendors, sometimes they aren’t right for a particular medical practice. Apart from offering quick access to out-of-the-box features, an EMR should also provide as much customization as possible so that it can be changed to fit the needs of medical practitioners. Many systems fail to provide this flexibility which is a reason of frustration for many healthcare providers.
Interoperability is another challenge associated with off-the-shelf solutions. An interoperable environment is essential to make the information available to the right people at the right time. However, the pre-built solutions are unable to provide this. Some vendors even demand extremely high exchange data fees to set up such connections.

 Building your own EMR: Why is it right for your practice?

Well, if you are also frustrated with your existing EHR system because it doesn’t meet the quality standards or your specific requirement, you must think about customizing it! If quality and specificity is what you’re looking for, building your own EMR would seem a perfect fit. Quality is an important factor in drawing patients and insurance companies, and a DIY EMR helps you do constant quality improvement. In fact, building your own EMR is rather a better option than customizing an existing system.

 Limitations associated with building your own EMR

There are certain limitations associated with building your own EMR from scratch. The first problem is that you have to continually pay development costs for creating modifications and adding enhancements. If you get an EMR from a vendor, you continue to benefit from the enhancements that they make by paying just a small update and maintenance fee.

The next drawback is the limited access to skills and expertise. It’s obvious that one programmer can’t compete with a whole team of programmers specialized in developing EMRs. The third limitation is the time. Building your own EMR from scratch with limited access to human resources is a time consuming process. Developing an EMR that has all the basic and advanced features is not a simple job, even for the most experienced programmer. It takes tons of time and efforts, which makes it sometimes impractical to build a full-fledged system in-house.

Building your own full-featured EMR in-house is no doubt more desirable when it comes to meeting your specific needs, however, if you don’t have sufficient time, resources and money to create it from the scratch, off-the-shelf customizable solution is the most cost-effective option for you. We, at Vigyanix recognize this critical need and, therefore, provide customized EMRs that are right for your practice. We have the right knowledge and skill set to build comprehensive and unique health information exchange software solutions that comply with the regulatory standards.