Training New Practice Fusion Employees on the EMR Industry
As Practice Fusion’s Trainer, I have the pleasure of working with all new hires during their first week. I have a lot of fun doing it and I hope they do too, but I’m sure for them it also feels like drinking from a fire hose — there’s a lot of information to learn.
Of course they must learn how to use Practice Fusion’s EMR, everything from charting and scheduling to e-prescribing and lab results. Luckily for all of us, the EMR is easy to use.
The areas that really take time are learning the history of EMRs and the current state of the industry. The reason is not because of the past fifteen years, which admittedly have been underwhelming in terms of adoption before Practice Fusion arrived at the scene, but rather because of today’s rapid changes brought on by the EMR incentive program.
In fact, before discussing the EMR incentive program with any new hire I always have to double check my facts because they likely changed over the past week. Once or twice I’ve had to correct myself by saying, “Hey, remember when I said that ‘xyz’ wasn’t announced yet? Well it turns out it was announced this morning.”
It’s also important to discuss the differences between Practice Fusion and legacy vendors. A web-based, free EMR lends itself to favorable EMR comparisons to the expensive, client-server model and those differences are key to our company’s success.
Though what I find most important is explaining who our users are. Functionality of the EMR, the government incentive program and Practice Fusion’s position in the industry are all secondary to understanding the medical professionals who use our EMR because they are our greatest strength.
First I explain that our core demographic is small to midsize practices. We can very well accommodate large practices but especially when it comes to the majority of providers for whom legacy vendors are prohibitively expensive, Practice Fusion’s EMR is the best bet.
Many of our users also have had negative experiences with other EMRs. So when they find us, the concept of a free EMR that is easy to use and more functional than the rest of the market takes some getting used to.
Explaining what happens once they realize that Practice Fusion is exactly as it appears to be is my favorite part of training new hires. Medical professionals don’t just join our user base, they become an integral part of the fastest growing EMR community in the country. I generally let our testimonials and Facebook page speak for me at this point because there is plenty of ecstatic feedback that I couldn’t have made up.
It’s what makes working at Practice Fusion so rewarding and what makes introducing new hires to our company such an honor. And our company is growing rapidly so there will be a lot of training to do. We’ll continue to match the enthusiasm of our user community and of course keep up with all the changes that affect both the medical professionals in front of our EMR and those of us working behind it.
Derek Ward
Product Evangelist and Trainer
Practice Fusion EHR
