An EHR (Electronic Health Record) system allows for the digital storage, retrieval, analysis, and sharing of patient data. It elevates productivity, efficiency, and order in handling data.
Who can use the EHR system? From the definition, you probably think it’s only meant for hospitals. However, it’s found in more settings than just healthcare ones. One such setting is the wellness industry, specifically spas.
A spa is a facility that offers relaxing, therapeutic, and beautifying treatments to its customers. These services, especially the latter, require you to have personal data about the patient. This is where an EHR system becomes useful.
Are you running a spa business and want to adopt an EHR system? How do you get started on building one?
Here are some tips to guide you in the process:
- Identify Your Needs
To build the ideal EHR system, you must first identify your needs. They will help you determine what functions your system must have and how many assets you need to put it together.
It’d help to list the operations of your spa business. Since the EHR is all about your patients, consider using the client journey from when they enter your spa until they leave it. This will help pinpoint your needs while avoiding missing any crucial steps. Your needs could include booking appointments, recording patient history, or arranging client follow-ups.
- Go Phasal
One of the mistakes businesses make when building and adopting systems is doing it all at once. When this happens, it can be overwhelming for your team, making it harder to fully realize a proper EHR system.
Doing this puts your spa at risk, especially when you end up cutting corners. Should the system fail, so will your operations.
Going phasal is the better choice. It entails the implementation of an EHR system in phases. The best way to do this is to first implement the system for non-crucial operations. Doing this allows you to perfect it before fully adopting it, which can cause havoc in case of failure.
- Find The Ideal EHR Platform
Adopting an EHR system in your spa business requires you to have a platform or software. Therefore, you need to choose the ideal one.
An ideal platform should meet all your spa business needs without fail. Ensure this by comparing every prospective platform’s features to your needs.
Reliability is the other aspect you should seek from the EHR platform. You want to be sure it won’t fail you in your time of need.
It all goes down to quality. One way to determine that is the vendor of your platform. Are they reputable? You can check that by looking at reviews about their products, particularly the platform you plan to use.
You can find them with a general Google search or by visiting the feedback section of their website. Look out for comments about the efficiency and reliability of their system from their previous and current clients.
Lastly, check for scalability. Your spa business is likely to grow over time. The ideal EHR platform should be flexible enough to accommodate incremental developments. You want to avoid situations where you must acquire a new platform with every advancement.
- Always Have Customer Support
An EHR system is like any other tool. That means you’re also likely to experience challenges here and there as you use it.
Without customer support, you might end up abandoning the platform, which would be a waste of your investment. In other cases, you’ll overlook the issues and use the platform inefficiently, which will only cause more problems down the line.
Hence, always ensure you have customer support. Ask the vendor’s EHR system if they offer that.
Is customer support free? Do they offer customer support online, physically, or both? What are your customer support contacts? Who’ll answer on the other end of the line? Do they outsource their customer support services? These are the questions to ask in determining its quality.
Ensure you’re satisfied with the answers you get; if not, find another EHR solution.
- Factor In Regulations
As a medical spa, you handle a lot of patient data, most of which is confidential. The client will be directly affected if this data gets into the wrong hands.
Regulatory bodies have established the dos and don’ts surrounding data handling to prevent such situations and guide you better, the most common one being data privacy.
Therefore, ensure you build your EHR system to comply with such regulations. Doing so will assure your clients of their privacy and allow them to be confident in choosing you over other providers. This is key to retaining them in the long term.
Build The Ideal One
As you can see, building an EHR system for your spa business doesn’t require much. All that’s needed is to build a system that efficiently meets all your spa needs while complying with the necessary regulations.
Therefore, if you plan on digitalizing your spa business, this is the first step you can take. Feel free to consult experts for better results.
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