Administration Cleanup for Your athenahealth EHR

EHR data cleanup is essential for system performance and user satisfaction.

Clean-up includes fixing or removing incorrect, corrupt, incorrectly formatted, duplicate, or incomplete data from your database. There are many opportunities for data to be duplicated or mislabeled by your users, and identifying these issues and cleaning them can make your system more efficient for your staff and users.

Data cleanup is one of the most overlooked “chores.” Practices skip this when projects and emergent issues take precedence. Failure to maintain your system can lead to downstream issues. These issues can affect accurate charting and system use.

Just like cleaning your home, your data cleanup priorities may vary. If you find that your system needs major cleaning, and you don’t have the time, try prioritizing your organization’s needs so you can create a plan to fix items throughout the year. Eventually, you will want to incorporate regular maintenance into your routine.

In this blog, we outline areas to review and the available reports to help you easily identify and address any problem areas.

 

Where to Start

It may seem overwhelming, but you can access administrative reports to highlight what areas need to be addressed. Start with the quick tasks that can be easily completed by EMR managers and administration and then proceed to areas that might take longer and need coordination.

 

Admin Cleaning – Security

This may be one of the most important and neglected areas for an administrator to handle. Keeping up with role changes, user access levels, and removing user permissions for former staff are all important for keeping your organization secure. This includes checking the following:

• Role-based security
• No individual securities – these are very hard to track
• User access to the minimum necessary to do their job

Med Tech Solutions can provide you with a report that lists all the Securities and if any assistance is needed, feel free to contact us.  The report can be used to identify what security all your Groups should have, and their roles based on job descriptions. We recommend that all your security Groups have the access only needed for their roles and make sure to delete any users that have individual overrides.

Here is an example of an SQL report that can show you a user security report. MTS can run this report for you and provide professional assistance where needed.

In Admin, you can review Security by Group and Security by User. To view who may have Individual Overrides, click on the Security by Permission Tab. On this list, you will see who may have the overrides of each Permission list item. Users with Individual Overrides should be reviewed and placed in groups and the overrides should be eliminated.

You can use the above SQL to obtain information on users within your security groups.

 

Admin Cleaning – Form Components

Duplicate form components can be confusing and can run counter to documentation goals. Therefore, we recommend that you remove old/outdated or duplicate components. Having duplicate form components can result in the same label for form components listed multiple times and users can be using an outdated/old form. Admins should also review any opportunities to retire form components and have a clear understanding of what users can pull in.

If you are not sure what form components are being used, you can try the following:

• Review Document Templates and list unique form components.
• Run a report on your users’ favorites.
• Rename forms to remove with a tag.
• Tell users that forms with this tag will be removed unless they contact you.
• After a waiting period, remove the forms.

Admin Cleaning – Encounter Types

Each time your users open a document, they choose an Encounter Type. Are your users using My Folders to consolidate the list of Encounter Types? Is your list as concise and accurate as it should be? To “clean up” encounter types you will first want to see what your users can see, review opportunities to retire Encounter Types, and remove old/outdated/duplicate Encounter Types.

If you are not sure which Encounter Type your practice is using, you can try the following: Insert a text component into each Encounter Type that sets an unused observation term to the encounter type name.  Run a report on this observation term after some time.  Remove any Encounter Types not opened in your reporting period.

 

 

Admin Cleaning – Orders and Custom Lists

Are you using all the custom lists in your system?

Have you checked for an opportunity to reduce for usability purposes?

Admins should review orders and customs lists, retire unused orders and custom lists, and have a clear understanding of what their users can see and use.

With custom lists and orders here are a few items to remember:

• Custom lists can contain a combination of services, referrals, tests, and procedures.
• Custom lists can only include orders that have already been set up in the application.
• You can include the same order code in multiple custom lists.
• The same list of order custom lists is shared by all locations of care in the database.
• Custom lists are not required but are highly recommended.
• Remove any custom lists not being used, for example, CCC custom lists.

* Are you using CCC custom lists? If you are not, our recommendation would be to clean out the custom list with the lists that your users are not using. For the most common custom order lists that you are using, you should put a “.” in front of the name so the custom list floats to the top and it’s easier for your staff to find.

If you find your organization is struggling with data cleanup or any other EHR issues, let us help sort those out.

These cleaning tips will help ensure your system is more efficient for your Admins and Managers. If you need any assistance, the experts at Med Tech Solutions can help. Contact us today to have your athenahealth system inspected and allow us to identify the “cobwebs” and “dust” potentially causing issues in your system that can be cleaned up in your EHR.