In brief, here is what EMR can do for a medical practice:

- In-office instant messaging.

- Email management.

- Labs management.

- Prescription management.

- Appointments and reminders.

- Problem list.

- Database search.

- Clinical reports.

- and more!

As you can see, most of the features help to manage the operations of the practice. Every little task and every little detail will be recorded by the EMR. As the medical practice grows, so do the patient records. It is hard to imagine a practice that doesn't have a proper system to help manage the work flow and processes as the growth continues.

It's obvious that without EMR software, serious problems will eventually start to arise. Firstly, searching through the records become more and more difficult. Communications between staff also becomes harder, especially when the physical office space starts to grow, and more staff are being employed.

This is inevitable. More work means more people are needed to share the workload. But employing more staff does not solve all the problems. The practice will then have to deal with staff turnover. Surely, you don't want to lose good staff just because you don't have a proper system in place to help make their work easier. If someone starts comparing work environments, and a clinic as proper EMR software and yours doesn't, where do you think they will prefer to work at?

Having established that EMR software is a must have for your practice, let's look at how to evaluate such software in the marketplace.

Ease of integration.

Integration has always been a major problem for IT vendors. It's very hard to find software solutions that can be integrated with other software. For example, you may or may not be able to integrate the EMR software with your email or instant messengers. That makes it difficult for you to setup an all-in-one system. Without integration, you will have to launch one software for one task, and another software for another task. This may lead to complications, which is not what you are looking for. Simplicity would be a much better option.

Availability of training.

A EMR software that you are evaluating should be easy to use. That means anyone, even those without a technical background, should be able to learn how to use the software without any major issues. To make a smooth transition from manual to automation, proper training should still be provided.

After sales support.

It is unrealistic to expect staff to know everything about the software after undergoing the training. Problems may still arise while using the software. Therefore, it is important to have excellent after sales support.