Electronic Health Records and Change Management

Abstract— Electronic health records (EHRs) offer many potential opportunities for patients, payers, physicians, and other healthcare providers. These opportunities are only realized if healthcare organizations commit to investing in EHRs and providers adopt the new technology for the benefit of patient care, higher quality, fewer errors, and greater efficiency. This paper focuses on increasing the probability those healthcare organizations in general but physicians and providers in particular adopt EHRs as a valuable tool to prevent and manage disease and illness. The adoption of EHRs often has less to do with the technology and more to do with the underlying changes in business/clinical processes, work flow, and daily tasks. Two models of change are presented, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Kotter’s Leading Change Model, to guide leaders in the adoption of EHRs in medical groups. A case study is used to illustrate the eight steps outlined in Kotter’s Leading Change Model beginning with establishing a sense of urgency to anchoring new approaches to the culture of the medical group. This paper ends with an invitation for future researchers to identify with greater specificity some of the key variables distinguishing a smoother versus a choppy installation and adoption of an EHR in a medical group or other type of healthcare organization.