Electronic medical record (EMR) platforms and their shortcomings are a major source of frustration for both the providers who use them and the facilities who implement them. Healthcare professionals lament a lack of usability, while facilities often cite the high costs and provider training time involved in implementing such systems.
For facilities that hire locum tenens providers, the EMR training process must be completed quickly to ensure the new employee can begin working immediately. Depending on the provider’s familiarity with the platform and the complexity of charting required, locums are usually given one to three days of EMR software training. Many facilities who work with Barton Associates look for providers who are already familiar with their EMR platform in the hope of streamlining the staffing process.
For hospitals, practices, companies, and other healthcare facilities looking for these experienced providers, there’s good news: Locum tenens physicians, nurse practitioners (NPs), physician assistants (PAs), dentists, and CRNAs are some of the most savvy EMR users in the industry. We reached out to approximately 150 of our most active locums to gain more insight about their experiences using various EMR software programs. Although a large majority of the respondents were locum tenens physicians, all the provider types Barton works with were represented in the survey. Here’s what we learned:
They Are Experienced in the Most Widely Used Platforms
We asked our locum tenens which EMR platforms they have encountered during their assignments, and they responded with some of the most widely used platforms in today’s market, including Cerner, Meditech, Epic, and NextGen.
They Have Experience With Multiple Platforms
Depending on how many facilities in which they’ve worked and which platforms those facilities use, some providers have experience in multiple EMR platforms. In fact, 10 percent of our respondents noted having experience with at least five different platforms.
When asked about the number of EMR platforms they had used while on assignment with Barton Associates, the majority of our locum tenens providers had encountered an average of two different platforms. Dentists reported encountering the fewest number of EMR systems, the likely result of fewer EMR platforms available for dentistry than for other medical specialties.
More Assignments Means More EMR Experience
We also asked our locums how many assignments they’ve completed for Barton Associates in hopes of discovering a connection between the number of assignments a locum worked and how many EMR platforms they had used. After running the numbers, we found the more assignments a locum had completed, the more likely they were to have experience with multiple EMR platforms.
The numbers are in: If your facility is seeking an EMR-savvy physician, NP, PA, dentist, or CRNA, you can be confident that a Barton locum will be quickly and easily trained, or may already be proficient in your platform of choice.
