Physical Therapy EMR Check Up - 3 things to do now

Does your Physical Therapy EMR need a tune up?

Save time.Save money.More time with patients. You've heard this all before. It's the promise of physical therapy EMR. Hopefully you're using a competent physical therapy EMR (hint, we're a good one). A good EMR will make it easy for you to do some things that help make you faster and more compliant.

1. Customize your templates to fit your patients, practice, and clinical style

Estimated time investment: 30 minutes for a templateCustomization is the gift that keeps on giving. Take some time and customize your documentation templates. Be sure to take the time to pay attention to key things such as:

• Do you have everything in the order that you like it
• Do you have a place to document everything that you like to document
• Is the template customized to your preferences and that of your staff?
• Is there anything you can do to make those that refer patients to you happier when it comes to your documentation - particularly your plan of care.
• Make sure your documentation aligns with your training and clinical preferences

Every minute you spend customizing will come back to you in spades when writing patient notes. You'll find that things flow better, go faster and ultimately produce a better note product. In turn, this will make your staff happier, your referrers happier, and improve compliance/the bottom line.

2. Do a security check-up

Estimated time investment: 15 minutesEMR and security go hand-in-hand. You should take a few minutes to check up a few things to make sure everything looks good in your physical therapy EMR as it relates to security.

• Check your user list and make sure only people that need access to your EMR have access.
• Also, ensure that users only have the access that they need and not more​. This is called the principle of least privilege, click here to learn more.
• Review recent logs and audit reports to see if you see anything out of the ordinary.

These are simple things that you can do to keep your EMR secure and avoid breaches and other compliance concerns.

3. Simplify

Estimated time investment: 15 minutesYou treat your patients. What you do needs to be documented and documented well. That doesn't mean that your physical therapy documentation needs to be over the top complicated. Longer notes don't automatically mean better notes. Keep your eye on the ball - be complete, be specific, but avoid fillers or unnecessary information. Remember, the end goal is defensible documentation not the longest document.

The bottom line

Make your practice run like top with a little bit or a tune-up from time-to-time. Take a few minutes today and give your EMR a tune up and produce better physical therapy documentation in less time.