In our two previous articles, we described an “as-is” exercise with the EHRA workgroup and the HIMSS Physician Committee members where one issue became the focus: the flexibility of workflows. This series of blog posts reviews the results of the exercise and describes a path forward. So far, this series has covered Learning the EHR, Personalizing the EHR and Understanding the Patient. In this article we discuss the fourth and final topic that was raised: Providing Care.

Providing Care
Providing medical care for the patient necessitates “last mile” flexibility that allows clinicians to jump in and out of the expected workflow. It has been demonstrated that a defined “workflow” that physicians agreed upon during development most commonly erodes after the first several steps. (1,2) The ability to step back into the workflow after a short detour needs to be readily available in an intuitive and simple manner. There should also be flexibility in how the EHR is used, both to conform to an individual’s working style as well as to respond to the demands of a clinical situation. Along these lines, but not limited to them, is the ability to have more than one patient record open with safeguards that ensure the correct data is always entered into the right patient’s chart.