EHR Health IT Service Desk FAQs

The EHR help desk serves as the front line of support for clinicians, support staff, and patients when technical issues arise. Because of its broad reach, poor support or delayed ticket resolution can negatively affect physician satisfaction, EHR utilization, operational efficiency, and patient care coordination. To strategically assess your help desk support options, consider these top four questions to ask vendors when evaluating how to cost-effectively support a meaningful EHR service desk.

1. What is the value-add of supplemental service desk support?
   By supplementing support for service desk operations, health system leaders can enable internal IT teams to focus on high-priority projects or mission critical IT initiatives. This approach not only alleviates day-to-day operational support demands but also helps control costs by freeing higher-value internal resources from routine tier 1 support tasks. Utilizing supplemental EHR help desk support can also improve internal IT staff satisfaction, allowing team members to operate at the highest level of their license or certification while delivering greater value to IT operations.

   Advanced service desk analytics can further enhance value by helping healthcare organizations measure performance, reveal root-cause issues and maximize health IT ROI. Additionally, supplemental IT help desk support can boost end-user support efficiency by minimizing EHR support backlog, reducing re-occurring end-user errors, and diminishing ticket escalations. Seek support vendors, such as Med Tech Solutions (MTS), that prioritize first-contact resolution, support analytics and continuous SLA improvement to help clinicians spend more time focused on direct patient care.

2. What is the impact of an EHR service desk on the end-user experience?
   Because the help desk serves as the face of the IT department, the quality of each support interaction shapes the end-user experience. When users fail to receive timely, knowledgeable, and empathetic support, EHR frustration can grow, clinician burnout worsens, and confidence in future IT initiatives may dwindle. Seek service desk partnerships that prioritize full issue resolutions through a clinically consultative, EHR-centric service desk focused on elevating the end-user experience and effectively supporting clinicians — even at a tier 1 level. Ensure service desk agents are EHR-certified, understand clinical jargon and hospital workflows, and lead with a customer service focus. Additionally, ask whether vendors offer clinician-focused EHR support services designed to further enhance the end-user experience. For example, MTS provides several provider-specific offerings, including its Physician Concierge Line for priority support and one-on-one Provider Sessions that address individualized EHR challenges, education gaps, preference list optimization, and workflow customization needs. By prioritizing end-user satisfaction in service desk selection, healthcare organizations can transform a ticket-taking help desk into a true support desk.
3. Can health system service desk support be customized?
   When considering additional service desk support, examine a vendor’s complete range of customization options. First, healthcare organizations should be able to opt into EHR-only support, desktop and technical support, patient portal end-user support, or remote access support — or all these services at once. As healthcare organizations evolve or add additional applications or security measures, support partners must be able to flex to support these changes as well. Customization offerings should also extend to time-of-day needs. This may include 24/7×365 support or after-hours only support, when the internal team isn’t staffed either due to a limited local talent pool or significantly increased costs. Ideally, a service desk vendor should offer a fully customizable support solution to meet a healthcare organization’s specific needs.

   Furthermore, prioritize an agile IT service desk partnership, who can deliver real-time flexibility to ramp up and adjust staffing on an immediate basis. Effective partners take a proactive resource approach, eliminating workforce hurdles by staffing for demand based on evolving call volume trends during project or operational fluctuations. Ensure external resources have the scalability to seamlessly absorb support for new version upgrades, M&A alignment, or new facility training for continuity across all end-user groups, departments, and locations.

4. What are best practices for integrating supplemental service desk resources into internal IT operations?
   All outsourced resources should be capable of becoming an extension of the internal IT department, to the point where end users cannot tell the difference between internal or external support quality. This requires aligning with vendors, like MTS, who can deliver clinically consultative EHR support analysts for meaningful knowledge transfer. Moreover, it is important to understand that internal IT teams often take pride in supporting hospital staff and may feel threatened by external support — especially if collaboration is lacking. Ensure IT staff understand that utilizing a blended support framework ultimately benefits their team by minimizing a support burden and granting individuals peace of mind to focus time on alternative IT projects or advancing their skillsets. Tactics like creating and optimizing knowledge base articles (KBAs) and how-to instruction sets can help facilitate collaboration between service desk agents and internal IT staff.

Consider these EHR service desk FAQs when evaluating strategies to enhance end-user support and identify the right service desk solution for your healthcare organization, whether through a fully or partially outsourced model. By combining proven best practice approaches with expert resources, a partnership with MTS can help your team overcome EHR support strain to align technology support strategy with your competitive growth roadmap.