Because education is one of the most impactful factors in the clinician electronic health record experience, KLAS researchers say they are comparing EHR education service offerings and software features to support healthcare organizations in their efforts to improve clinician EHR proficiency. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The EHR Education Vendor & Firm Capabilities white paper offers a framework for comparison and further research, according to the KLAS Arch Collaborative. 

KLAS researchers compared vendors' professed program development, content building and staffing services across 13 categories, as well as the content, scheduling and communications, and assessment and analysis features in their software across 32 features.

Of the 17 vendors providing EHR clinicians education and training services 314e, Optimum Healthcare IT and Tegria say they offer the highest number of service categories as primary focus areas, according to the KLAS researchers. 

They all support Epic EHRs and most support Oracle Health while five support Meditech, three support Altera and two support athenahealth EHRs.

Strategy and program development categories in the KLAS EHR education services framework include building education programs, assessing and optimizing current programs, selecting education software, creating a plan for communicating and marketing educational content, and providing change management.

Content-building services cover content creation for classrooms or e-learning, and builds for simulation environments.

Staffing-service categories range from outsourced education programs to go-live and/or ongoing education services, assisting with EHR educator development or coaching, and providing trainers to fill staffing gaps.

Of the nine vendors offering software solutions for EHR education and training, MedPower and uPerform offered full deployment for the majority of features examined. 

Several vendors offered limited deployment of features, although several features are not offered, or the vendors say they are in development. Sedona Learning Solutions has the highest number of features the company says are in development.

Content features in the KLAS EHR education software features framework include creation tools like video, documentation and out-of-the-box content, curation tools, and instructor-led and self-paced formats. 

Scheduling and communications features examined cover a number of processes, like automatic course assignments, and importing data to email and automated outreach.

Assessment and analysis features include tracking tools, course surveys, dashboards and reporting. Of note, only Amplifire currently offers mapping to EHR efficiency data included without additional cost, the company says.

While the report is a compilation of vendor and firm claims about their services and software, KLAS says the next step is validating the claims, based on the new framework, with the more than 240,000 clinicians participating in Arch Collaborative EHR experience benchmarking in a follow-up report.

THE LARGER TREND

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information analyzed four waves of a nationally representative survey of U.S. nonfederal acute care hospitals that occurred between 2017 and 2021 to measure physician documentation burnout.

ONC said it found some progress has been made in using EHR audit log data to identify clinicians in need of training.

Healthcare organizations can use EHR training and education services and software to reduce clinician burnout and improve satisfaction and retention rates.

After a merger of five practices before the pandemic, Dr. Harry C Eschenroeder Jr., CMIO of OrthoVirginia, looked at which methodologies could be used to successfully implement a continuous education program for physicians that reported poor EHR satisfaction and how training investments could boost EHR satisfaction.

"Providers must understand that they bear a responsibility to master and improve their imperfect EHR for the benefit of their patients," he told Healthcare IT News. 

However, "they need to experience some wins in making their EHR better."

ON THE RECORD

"With staffing shortages and limited resources aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare organizations are looking to software vendors and services firms to help improve clinician EHR education," according to the KLAS researchers that developed the framework for further EHR education resources evaluation.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.