Benefits of going “all-in” on EHR & CRM implementation

By now, you probably don’t need to be reminded why electronic health records (EHR) combined with customer relationship management software (CRM) transforms how you interact with leads, prospects, and residents. The only question now is how best to go about the senior living EHR and CRM implementation process.

Of course, any changes to the way you manage resident care, your business operations, or your sales process will likely come with logistical hurdles that must be addressed before you can take full advantage of everything your new EHR and CRM software can do for your senior living community. Because of this, some SLCs understandably believe that EHR and CRM implementation will be easier if tackled one at a time. After all, slow and steady wins the race, right?

In this post, we’ll explore why a “staged” implementation approach may not be as advantageous as it seems and why going “all-in” with your senior living EHR/CRM rollout could help your community to start realizing the benefits of your investment much sooner.

1. It lets your data flow

Perhaps the biggest advantage of implementing a comprehensive senior living EHR solution—one that includes marketing, revenue cycle management, resident care management, and everything else—is that the data you enter into one system can flow freely into the next from day one. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re using our senior living CRM solution to track, manage and build better relationships with leads, from initial inquiry to final move-in. If your community also uses our resident care management system, everything you’ve learned about your new resident during the sales cycle is automatically passed through to the clinical side of your senior living software. This includes data from any assessments or evaluations you might have performed during the sales process.

On the other hand, choosing to implement and acclimate to your senior living CRM solution before the other components come online, means you’ll still need to manually re-enter prospect data into your care management system. Not only does this take longer, but it also increases your risk of data entry errors.

2. It helps prevent lost revenue

Implementing your senior living EHR all at once can also help you reclaim lost revenue, or better yet, prevent revenue from getting lost in the first place. As resident care changes over time, you’ll need to manually enter the additional care-related or ancillary service charges into your billing and A/R system. In a perfect world, none of these billing updates would slip through the cracks. But, in our experience, senior living communities commonly provide services that never make it into the A/R system.

By implementing your integrated EHR solution all at once, changes made on the care management side are automatically pushed through to the revenue side. This is a win for both parties: residents immediately begin receiving the services they need, and your senior living community receives the compensation it deserves.

3. It saves time and money in the long run

While it’s true that comprehensive EHR implementation takes more time upfront, the process is usually completed in less time overall than with a segmented implementation approach. With a phased EHR implementation, your staff will need to acclimate to a new process several times over. As soon as they become comfortable with one component of your new system, it will be time to introduce the next piece of the puzzle.

Compare this to implementing your senior living EHR all at once. Sure there will be more to take in, but it’s a one-time learning curve that typically results in peak operational efficiency in less time than a phased rollout. And, as the previous two points have hopefully shown, the sooner your new EHR solution is fully up and running, the sooner it starts paying you back.

Is comprehensive Senior Living EHR implementation right for you?

At MatrixCare, we have more than three decades of experience working with senior living communities large and small. If full-scale, simultaneous EHR implementation just doesn’t make sense for your organization, we’ll collaborate as partners to find an approach that demonstrates new efficiencies and ROI as quickly as possible.