What guidance can we provide?

New technology is good. But for medical practices and hospitals, the shift to electronic health records posed more than a few challenges.

Working with a global public relations firm, ANR used qualitative and quantitative studies to look at the challenges firsthand. We discovered how crucial practice managers would become to the successful implementation of EHR systems. We learned how quickly physicians, administrators, and managers moved from one task to another. We uncovered the hidden schedules of doctors and nurses.

Since our early studies, Electronic Health Records have become the norm in today’s medical community. As the focus of EHR research has switched from adoption to implementation and refinement, ANR continues to work with federal agencies and media partners to understand the most effective ways to speak to healthcare professionals about this technology.

In the mid-2000s, the federal government developed incentives and penalties to increase the use of electronic health records (EHRs). At the time, adoption of EHR was slow. Doctors wrote notes by hand, which were famously unreadable. Entering data took extra time and personnel — if there was even someone in the practice who knew how to do it.

With the help of our findings, our partner was able to convey the technical information medical professionals needed to implement electronic recordkeeping. Among the communications they produced were implementation manuals with instructions presented in only a few sentences per page in order to increase comprehension and ease of use. Guided by our studies, our client knew that medical professionals needed to absorb the information quickly, one page at a time, to accommodate their work schedules.