Why being a late PM adopter might not be a bad thing

If you have yet to adopt practice management system or software at your practice and you are wondering if it’s too late, there is still hope.

In fact, it may even be to your advantage to adopt a PM now, even late in the game. Late adopters of PM can learn from the practices that came before them—these early users of PM have helped these systems develop into better, more robust programs and have learned a variety of ways to use their PM systems to help their practices work more efficiently. You can too.

Read on to discover more about why being a late adopter can work to your advantage.

Learning best practices

There really are distinct best practices that can help you get the most from your software and grow your practice’s efficiency. PM is a complex system, after all. These best practices have formed out of the experiences of others. Although experience and making mistakes are often the best ways to learn, you can actually learn from the errors other practices make, so you can skip over some of the bad decisions you may otherwise make.

Consider these best practices you can learn from early adopters:

Have an implementation plan—Practices that did not carefully plan their implementation process often regret it later. After helping their customers manage many implementations in the past, vendors often have great recommendations to offer for practices that decide to implement new PM systems. As a late adopter, you can benefit from this knowledge, so you should consider taking advantage of it.
Learn from your peers—With so many online forums, you can easily learn from other practices. Because a lot of chiropractic offices are successfully using PM, there are probably plenty of people you can learn from.
Get training—Training resources are more readily available for many of the PM systems on the market today, so you can often find user guides, online knowledge-bases, ebooks, and tutorials.

Practice management system improvements

Thanks in a large part to continued software development and testing, today’s PM systems have vastly improved compared with how they were in the past. With these improvements, practices are able to become more efficient and improve patient care in many tangible ways. Practices can often get more work done, see more patients and improve wait times for appointments.

Keeping everything more efficient and productive can also help with improving how the business side of your practice operates. This can help your office save time and money, reduce administrative costs and improve in other measurable ways.

Here are a few advantages you benefit from by implementing PM now:

Usability improvements—Vendors have worked hard to respond to physicians’ concerns about usability. Thanks to these improvements, PM systems are now more user-friendly than before.
Interoperability—While not perfect yet, many systems are more interoperable than before and interact much better with different PM systems.
Reduced learning curve—Now, there is less to learn when you start using a new system, because PM software is becoming simpler to use. Training is still very helpful, but there is less to learn than before.

If you waited to start using PM, do not despair. There are many benefits to starting with a PM system now, even if you continued to put it off and now have to start fresh from scratch.

PM ready

You can benefit from the trials and errors of other practices—so it is never to late to start! Becoming PM ready can have real benefits for your practice. Do not be afraid to start the process, ask plenty of questions and research vendors.

How much your practice benefits from PM will vary, and keep in mind that every practice has different results. If you want to start implementation, be sure to do your own research and have a plan. Vendors are helpful resources—shop around and think carefully about what you want to know, learn and do.

Reference

Boan, L. “HIT Think: Why Being a Late EHR Adopter Isn’t a Bad Thing.” Health Data Management blog. https://www.healthdatamanagement.com/opinion/why-being-a-late-ehr-adopter-isnt-a-bad-thing. Published: September 2017. Accessed: October 2017.