Electronic Health Record: What and Why?
In the last decade, medical practices, regardless of size and medical specialty, are using medical software to manage their patients and care providers. As a result, the benefits of Electronic Health Records (EHR) are becoming more well understood, and the use of EHR software is on the rise. This jump in adoption is because there are many advantages of electronic health records that we’ll cover in this article.
What is an EHR?
The purpose of EHRs, or Electronic Health Records, is to consolidate a patient’s medical chart into digital documents. They are updated patient records that can be accessed in real time by authorized users in a digital format. They contain details of medical history, medications, allergies, radiology images, treatment plans and laboratory results of patients. In addition to the above, they also give physicians and care providers tools to help them make decisions about a patient’s care.
Why to adopt to EHR?
i) Better quality of care
- EHR provides physicians with health analytics.
- Patients are able to access medical histories.
- Easy communications with immediate physicians.
ii) Accuracy in patient’s information
- Eliminates the risk of theft or misplacement of sensitive data.
- Ignores the errors and mistakes taken place due to handwriting issues.
- Updating the patient’s information time and again.
- No difficulty in switching health professionals.
iii) Interoperability
- Continuity of care with the ability to exchange information.
- Useful to provide a health care environment for recuperation or hospice.
iv) Increase efficiency
- Building the templates help physicians having common patient issues leads which help to save time.
- Prescriptions can be electronically sent to the pharmacies and also EHR can automatically check them.
v) Increase in revenue
- EHR provides billing and payment tools to manage financial and billing systems.
- Easy to claim insurance for the user without missing out any evidence of their visit.
vi) Scalability
- Third-party EHR software grows with practice.
- Cloud-based EHRs can quickly integrate patient populations in the event and can scalable themselves.
vii) Accessibility
- With the help of the Internet, one can access EHRs managed by a third-party vendor from any location.
- Helps to improve collaboration with other health service providers.
viii) Customization
- EHR practice will make the transition virtually seamless.
ix) Security
- Your data is highly secured as EHR systems make sure that practices are Data act complaint.
x) Support
- EHR vendors handle the data updates automatically which almost make your IT concerns disappear and reduce its costs.
