Your NextGen EHR includes many built-in tools to help meet your needs, including NextGen Template Editor. But, each ambulatory practice is unique. That is why you need to develop custom NextGen EHR Templates. Your EHR should work for your practice, not the other way around. By customizing Templates, you can make your NextGen system fit your workflows, business needs, regulatory requirements, and goals. From simple tweaks to NextGen KBM or ACE Templates to custom specialty suites, TempDev can help you make your NextGen EHR system work for your practice.
Here are some tips to help you start customizing your NextGen EHR Templates to better meet your needs.
Design Your Workflows
Before you begin developing your custom Templates, you need to know your NextGen workflow. A workflow is your practice’s process for completing a task. When you transition to NextGen EHR, you may need to redesign some of your workflows to maximize your efficiency. To get the most out of custom Templates, start by examining what is and is not working about your current workflows. It would be best if you also described what the ideal workflow would look like for your practice. By starting with workflows, you can ensure that your NextGen EHR Templates are customized to meet your staff’s needs and designed to increase efficiency.
Define Business Requirements
After you have explored current and ideal workflows for your practice, you can start defining business requirements for your custom Templates. Business requirements describe, in detail, what your new Template needs to do to help make your practice successful. Business requirements are written from your perspective and transformed into technical requirements by developers. For each task requiring a custom Template, your business requirements should describe the following:
- The goals for each task (e.g. proper visit documentation, error-free prescribing)
- Your workflow, including how staff will interact with NextGen
- Any necessary approvals (e.g. physician champion sign-off or committee consent)
- Any task outputs (e.g. transmitted orders)
Establishing business requirements is essential whether you are working with professional NextGen developers or customizing NextGen Templates in house. Using a collaborative process to set business requirements helps staff come to an agreement on the goals for day-to-day tasks. It also ensures practice-wide clarity on workflows, approvals, and outputs. A collaborative process for setting business requirements can help you ease the implementation of custom Templates. If staff can agree on business requirements, then the custom Templates are more likely to fit their workflows and meet their needs.
Look for Products that Meet Your Needs
Your NextGen KBM or NextGen ACE templates include pre-built clinical content for completing common tasks. For some practices, modifying these existing Templates can satisfy your needs. With NextGen development support from TempDev, you can add needed functionality from NextGen KBM Templates to make them your own. Even simple changes can help Templates better fit your workflows. By making your NextGen EHR fit your practice, you can improve productivity and reduce physician burnout.
TempDev has also developed many customizable NextGen Templates to meet the needs of ambulatory practices. These Templates help you perform regular tasks like managing open orders, tracking quality measures, and manage appointment volumes. Here are just a few of TempDev’s Templates that can be further customized to meet your needs:
- EHR Operations Advisor Template: See an overview of patient volume for the day and drill down into individual patients to overview their clinical history and any open orders.
- Order Management Template: Track open orders and take action to close the order loop. This Template lets you centralize order management, reducing burdens on your providers, and improving patient care.
- COVID-19 Clinic Template: Rapidly provide COVID-19 vaccines to your patient population and accurately bill admin codes per Vaccine Manufacturer.
- Flu Clinic Template: Document and bill for flu shots without opening individual patients’ charts.
- COVID-19 Testing Clinic Template: Order and record results of COVID-19 testing without opening individual patients’ charts. You can customize default lab vendors for each site and pre-set result options.
- Quality Dashboard Template: See an overview of your key quality measures in real-time, including HEDIS, MIPS, and UDS. You can customize the quality measures you track and change them as your needs and goals change. Providers can quickly take action to complete outstanding preventive care or other tasks to improve quality measures. You can also streamline quality reporting.
Work with the Professionals to Develop NextGen EHR Templates
Your NextGen EHR is a complex system. To develop custom Templates from scratch, you will probably need professional developer support. TempDev’s developers specialize in NextGen template and document development, along with SQL expertise. With their help, you can make your NextGen EHR system fit seamlessly into your practice. For example, TempDev’s developers can help with the following customization tasks:
- Customize NextGen KBM or ACE Templates: Developers can help you add or enhance functionality to make existing NextGen Templates work better for your practice.
- Implement TempDev Templates: Get TempDev’s pre-configured solutions to common practice needs like order management or COVID-19 and flu shots. TempDev’s Developers can help you customize these Templates as needed to meet your practices’ goals and workflows.
- Design a custom specialty suite: If your practice has significant customization needs, developers can help you create a suite of custom NextGen Templates.
- Adjust SQL stored procedures: Developers can help you create or modify SQL stored procedures underlying your NextGen EHR to maximize efficiency and improve productivity.
How TempDev Can Help
TempDev’s developers specialize in NextGen. They have developed a wealth of customizable NextGen Templates, Documents, Reports, and Dashboards to meet your needs. We can customize each of our existing products for your practice. Or, our template developers can help you create something entirely new.
Call us at 888.TEMP.DEV today or contact us here to get started developing custom NextGen EHR Templates.