Plan Your Approach

You should begin planning as soon as you assess your practice readiness and decide to adopt an electronic health record (EHR). Planning draws on information gathered during the assessment phase to outline the organization’s EHR implementation plan.

Start, Stop, Sustain

Planning is critical not only for identifying the right tasks to perform and the order of those tasks, but also for communicating to the entire team the transition to health IT. One effective first step in the planning process is for your team to segment tasks into three categories:

• What new work tasks/processes are we going to start doing?
• What work tasks/processes are we going to stop doing?
• What work tasks/processes are we going to sustain?

The “Start, Stop, Sustain” exercise will help your organization envision what the new work environment will be like after EHR implementation and helps the team prioritize tasks in the overall project plan.

For More Information

For more information about building your EHR implementation plan, see the following resources.

• Step 2: Plan Your Approach
• What are the key steps of the electronic health record implementation planning phase?
• Who should be a part of my electronic health record implementation team during the planning process?
• Health IT Adoption Toolbox: Staffing and Expertise