What types of goals or metrics should I use?
We recommend that you set goals in areas that are important and meaningful to your practice. These may be clinical goals, revenue goals or goals around work environment. Goals in all three areas will help assure balanced processes after the implementation. Goals that are important to you will help you and your staff through the change process. We recommend you follow the "SMART" goals process. This process includes setting objectives and goals that meet the following criteria:
- Specific – Achieving the goal would make a difference for our patients and our practice
- Measureable – We can quantify the current level and the target goal
- Attainable – Although the goal may be a stretch, we can achieve it
- Relevant – This is worth the effort
- Time-bound – There are deadline and opportunities to celebrate success!
These goals become the guide posts for an electronic health record (EHR) implementation project, and achieving these goals will motivate providers and practice staff to make necessary changes and attain new skills.
For example, your practice/hospital/health center may want to use your EHR system to improve prostate cancer screening for at-risk patients. A SMART goal for your EHR system may be to improve the overall practice prostate screening rate for at-risk patients by at least 20% six months after EHR go-live. Although each practice/hospital/health center will need to develop their own EHR goals, using the SMART framework will ensure your EHR benefits your practice and your patients and enables your practice to celebrate success.