KLAS, a healthcare IT research company, has released a white paper comparing EHR education service offerings and software features. The report offers a framework for the comparison and validation of vendors’ program development, content building, and staffing services across 13 categories. The KLAS EHR education services framework includes strategy and program development categories such as building education programs, content-building services, and staffing-service categories. The report aims to support healthcare organizations in their efforts to improve clinician EHR proficiency and reduce clinician burnout.
Education plays a vital role in the success of electronic health record (EHR) implementation, and it has a significant impact on the clinician’s EHR experience. KLAS, a healthcare IT research and insights company, is working to compare EHR education service offerings and software features to help healthcare organizations improve clinician EHR proficiency. In their white paper, the KLAS Arch Collaborative provides a framework for comparison and further research.
KLAS researchers analyzed vendors’ program development, content building, and staffing services across 13 categories. They also evaluated the content, scheduling, communications, assessment, and analysis features in their software across 32 features. Of the 17 vendors offering EHR clinician education and training services, 314e, Optimum Healthcare IT, and Tegria offer the highest number of service categories as primary focus areas. They all support Epic EHRs, and most support Oracle Health, while five support Meditech, three support Altera, and two support AthenaHealth EHRs.
The KLAS EHR education services framework includes strategy and program development categories such as 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 building 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.
Nine vendors offer software solutions for EHR education and training, and MedPower and uPerform offer full deployment for the majority of features examined. Some vendors offer limited deployment of features, while others are not offered or are still in development. Sedona Learning Solutions has the highest number of features in development, according to the company. Content features in the KLAS EHR education software features framework include creation tools like video, documentation, out-of-the-box content, curation tools, and instructor-led and self-paced formats. Scheduling and communications features examined cover several processes, like automatic course assignments, importing data to email, and automated outreach. Assessment and analysis features include tracking tools, course surveys, dashboards, and reporting. The amplifier is the only vendor that currently offers mapping to EHR efficiency data without additional cost.
While the report is a compilation of vendor and firm claims about their services and software, KLAS plans to validate these claims based on the new framework. In a follow-up report, KLAS will validate the claims with more than 240,000 clinicians participating in Arch Collaborative EHR experience benchmarking.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information has analyzed four waves of a nationally representative survey of U.S. nonfederal acute care hospitals between 2017 and 2021 to measure physician documentation burnout. ONC found that 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.
Dr. Harry C. Eschenroeder Jr., Chief Medical Information Officer of OrthoVirginia, believes that providers must take responsibility for mastering and improving their EHRs for the benefit of their patients. He suggests that they need to experience some wins in making their EHR better. With staffing shortages and limited resources aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare organizations are looking to software vendors and service firms to help improve clinician EHR education. KLAS researchers are developing a framework for further EHR education resources evaluation to help meet this need.
