EHR Implementation Lessons Learned
This is a practical guide to building a lessons learned for an ehr implementation project — what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects, adapted to the realities of implementing an electronic health records system.
What a Lessons Learned is
A lessons learned is what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Lessons Learned. On an ehr implementation project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for an EHR Implementation project
EHR Implementation projects live or die on implementing an electronic health records system. A well-built lessons learned gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how ehr implementation projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What happened
- Impact
- Root cause
- Recommendation
EHR Implementation-specific considerations
Tailor the lessons learned to the risks that most often derail ehr implementation projects:
- Clinical workflow disruption
- Patient-data privacy
- Clinician adoption
Example
On a real ehr implementation project, the lessons learned would be shaped by implementing an electronic health records system. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — clinical workflow disruption, patient-data privacy, clinician adoption — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.