This free Web site teaches you how to roll out an EHR system

How do you get from pondering the possibility of electronic health records toactually using them? A free online tutorial produced under the auspices of theCenters for Medicare & Medicaid Services walks you through the steps.

The interactive Web site, called DOQ-IT University, was created for CMS by Masspro, the Medicare quality improvement organization in Massachusetts. The course work begins with assessing your readiness to switch to an EHR. A quiz in this section asks how comfortable you and your employees are with computer skills such as resizing windows and bookmarking favorite Web sites.

You then proceed to the next stages of planning, culture change, vendor selection, operational design, implementation, and evaluation and improvement. You'll learn how to create a project team, negotiate an EHR contract, design new and more streamlined workflows for treating patients, and transfer data from old paper charts to electronic ones.

DOQ-IT University is available to physicians nationwide. To register, go to elearning.qualitynet.org and follow the instructions. If you need help, call Linda Brenner, Masspro director of health IT services, at 1-781-419-2894.

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