Deciding to bring in a reliable EMR connection agency to assist your team can be challenging. While some members of your team may be excited about the expert knowledge and skills of the consultant, some may feel threatened. But truth be told, working with an EHR integration expert will be beneficial to your organization. This article will highlight some of the important reasons you need an EMR integration consultant.
1. Fill Expert Skill Gaps
The expertise needed to complete EMR interoperability projects is specific and scarce. If you want to get the desired results at the first attempt, you need someone who has succeeded with similar projects in the recent past.
In most cases, you may find out that hiring and training an in-house employee with the required skill set is very difficult. Most newly hired employees lack the EHR experience needed to implement projects within desired deadlines.
2. Reduce the Cost of Keeping Talent
Working with an EHR consultant for an integration project is more cost-effective than keeping high skilled in-house talent. You won’t need to go through a tedious recruitment task.
Hiring highly experienced talent with the expertise needed to design and deploy a robust interface engine will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Your organization can save a substantial amount of money by hiring a consultant. Immediately after the contract is completed, you only need to pay for support.
Outsourcing EHR interface projects also saves you the cost of providing various employee benefits like medical insurance.
Although a consultant’s hourly rates are sometimes higher than in-house staff rates, the consultant will start work immediately. There’s no need for them to go through any form of training. They also work with their team of experts to design, build and implement projects.
3. Complete Projects on Time and within Budget
Your in-house team members will have multiple projects to do. Most job descriptions for IT employees include various responsibilities apart from implementing EMR integration projects.
If an existing application has bugs, the same employees will have to fix it. Such “distractions” will affect the focus of your in-house developers and delay project completion.
On the other hand, working with a consultant who must complete a project on schedule is more efficient. There’ll be no distractions from day-to-day work activities or support issues.
4. Ensure Secure Integration
With the massive digitization of hospital operations throughout the U.S., most healthcare facilities now hold a huge volume of sensitive patient data. It is now possible to extract or hack a person’s demographics, location history, billing information, allergies, and complete medical history.
The plain-text nature of HL7 messages also leaves many healthcare systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks. With the healthcare transformation caused by COVID-19, many providers now use digital interfaces to provide care to patients in remote locations.
That’s why it is essential to work with an EHR integration expert that creates secure, encrypted data transfers.
5. Reduce the Cost of Future Interface Development
The benefits of working with an EMR interoperability expert don’t end with deploying a few interfaces. Your organization will continue to reap the benefits of efficiency and productivity for years to come.
For instance, your consultant can deploy an interface engine customized to meet your clinicians’ needs. Then your in-house team can create as many new interfaces as required.
Rather than spending several months to complete the deployment of an interface, your team will be able to build them within a few weeks.
Building robust, secure, efficient, and cost-effective EMR interfaces is not a trivial task. It requires the expertise of a reputable EMR interface developer. Working with a consultant will save you time, effort, resources and allow you to complete your project on schedule.
Connect With a Trusted EMR Connection Agency Today
Lifepoint Informatics has a team of highly skilled EMR/EHR interface development experts. Call us now at 877.522.8378 or visit our contact page to book a free demo or consultation.