Planning a Successful EHR Kick-Off

Planning the kick-off of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) implementation for a healthcare facility requires a great deal of planning and preparation to ensure your project starts off on the right track.  Once the go-live date is determined, you need to plan backwards and create a timeline that includes critical milestones such as design, build, testing, training, go-live, and post go-live maintenance and optimization.

First, an assumptions and decisions document should be developed from the start of the project that includes the guiding principles for the project, scope validation, critical success factors, operation plans, training plans, equipment plans, and other critical aspects that should be shared on a frequent basis.  After this, the executive leadership team will be able to validate the assumptions as the project moves forward, thus allowing these decisions to be easily referenced and help to keep the project on track.

One of the most important steps…