You will certainly be ‘tested’ during Unit and Integration Testing time during an EHR implementation.
The keys to a successful Testing Cycle is of course great test scripts based on functional requirements that the users have shared with you at the beginning of the project and following them. Having teams that have at least some experience with the software and it’s workflow is ideal and have an understanding of what should happen on each and every screen, such as going through a Progress Note.
Try and understand what has gone wrong from previous experiences; whether it is of known bugs (you may have to work on this and try and get it out of the vendor as I am sure they won’t want to admit that there are any “bugs” at all) or some user forced errors. It is not a great distinction to be the first to find out about an bug in the system. Identifying dates for fixes as well as workaround if issues are discovered is an effective plan for action on any identified workflow issues. Additionally, always assume that the software will not perform the way you think it will and perform a stress test to try and simulate a “day in the life” environment as much as possible. Having 2 to 3 trial runs would be ideal. If you have a major code change, a strong suggestion would be to do “regression testing”, which checks to see if previously known bugs return after a patch is put in place and possibly interferes with previously written code. Summing it all up really is that the 3 most important words in prior to an EHR/EMR implementation Go Live are “Test, test, test!”
Healthcare Interoperability 