An Electronic Health Records is a digital representation of a patient’s medical record that kept up to date over time by the provider and may contain all of the essential administrative clinical data pertinent to that person’s treatment by that provider.
Electronic Health Records Pros and Cons
EHRs have a wide range of potential advantages for both patients and clinicians, as well as favorable clinical, organizational, and social results. Even though Free medical charting software is great tools for doctors, it is unrealistic to expect them to work well on their own.
Nevertheless, studies have also found many possible disadvantages to EHRs, such as higher initial acquisition and ongoing maintenance costs, and workflow disruptions brought on by the need to learn a new system, which can contribute to productivity losses. Additionally, many people continue to worry about their privacy when it comes to EHRs To help you decide whether and when to deploy an EHR system in your medical practice, the following provides information on the various benefits and potential drawbacks of EHRs.
Benefits of Electronic Health Records
Improved Quality of Care
Computerized records are simple to read, in contrast to the notoriously sloppy handwriting of physicians. As a result, there is far less chance that crucial areas like diagnosis and medical orders would be misunderstood or executed incorrectly, which could have serious health implications for the patient.
- Boost documentation accuracy, simplify and speed up the submission of diagnoses and claims.
- Start treatments very away and use automatic alerts to note any dangers.
- Drug-drug interaction warnings are included, and you may track and manage your medications in one place.
- Make tracking and implementing preventive care simpler
- More assistance should given when making point-of-care decisions.
- Integrate clinical recommendations based on evidence more quickly and efficiently.
EHRs also make it easier to gather and analyze data, as well as keep medical records more securely. This includes generating reports more quickly, thoroughly examining data trends, and effectively managing inventory.
Comfort and effectiveness
The time wasted by office and medical staff searching through mountains of paperwork to get the patient information they need has been eliminate. Instead, with only a few keystrokes, digital records may be access considerably faster and more effectively. This has numerous advantages for both patients and providers.
For the Provider
- Increasing cooperation with suppliers and partners
- utilizing coding software to make billing simpler
- Lowering the quantity of charts that must be pulled and filed once more
EHRs can reduce malpractice risk and transcription expenses by providing better documentation. They improve formulary adherence and decrease the need for pharmacy callbacks for clarification by making prescriptions simpler to read. EHRs also reduce the amount of resources used by minimizing the amount of paper forms required, eliminating redundant or pointless lab requests, and promoting simpler medication administration.
Save Space:
Reducing the need for and price of storage. A medical office is no longer need to provide itself with pricey file cabinets, folders, and a lot of printer paper and ink. Instead, the office can now use those unused monies to raise the standard of treatment and make better use of that extra space by storing additional medical supplies and equipment there. All of the medical records in your clinic can kept on a unique computer hard drive and backed up in the cloud in the interim.
EHRs reduce labor costs:
By making it possible to use templates to streamline document generation, speed up the evaluation of patient data, and cut down on the time spent calling or emailing people to remind them of appointments.
Additionally, they can enhance population management:
Reminders for patients made easier, payer reimbursements are improved, and participation in various pay-for-performance schemes is make possible.
For the Patient
A portal that patients can use to view their own medical records is typically part of an EHR system. As a result, the patient won’t need to make any pointless calls or appointments to get information that is readily available online. A side benefit of this improved patient access is that it saves doctors time and effort in locating, duplicating, and distributing files that the patient can now access independently.
EHRs also improve patient satisfaction in a number of other ways, such as by reducing the time it takes to reply to patient communications and requests for medicine refills, enhancing continuity of care, and delivering patient education materials.
Financial Rewards
In order for a doctor’s office to be eligible for certain federal incentives, they must comply with Medicare and Medicaid Meaningful Use standards. A certified EHR system can assist with this.
Electronic Health Records Disadvantages
As previously indicated, there are certain drawbacks to EHRs in addition to their many benefits, chief among them the ones listed below.
Cyber security and Privacy Concerns
EHR systems are not immune to hacker attacks, which can affect all electronic systems. If sensitive medical information falls into the wrong hands, the results could be disastrous.
Errors in the Data
Anyone accessing an EHR could be receiving inaccurate or partial information if it is not update right once after new information is learned, such as after an exam or after test results are receive. By the issuing practitioner as well as any specialists, pharmacists, physical therapists, or personal trainers involved in the patient’s care, this could result in later errors in diagnosis, treatment, and health outcomes.
Concerns about Malpractice Liability
Implementing an EHR system raises a number of liability issues, such as how to prevent the loss or destruction of sensitive medical data when moving from paper to electronic records. Errors in treatment could result from this in turn. Physicians may held accountable if they are unable to obtain all of the medical information at their disposal, especially if that information is mean to be easier to get since it is electronic.
Money and Time
The process of choosing, installing, and fully converting all of your paper records to digital ones via an EHR system might take years. You must decide on your spending limit and the features you need throughout that time. To identify and deploy the ideal EHR system for your practice, it also needs time to demo EHR products and negotiate with EHR system providers. After that, even when your new EHR system is fully operational and set up, you still need to devote time to training your personnel on how to utilize it.
There is also the expense of setting up and transitioning to a completely new medical records system, which is expensive even at competitive costs. Fortunately, higher price competition is becoming more common as more and more firms enter the market for EHR systems.
Effortlessness and inconvenience
An EHR system needs regular upgrades, as was previously mention. Your records may become inaccurate and lose their worth if your staff doesn’t remain on top of it. EHRs can also be inconvenient because they need internet access and computer access in order to function. That data may become inaccessible if there is a power outage or computer malfunction. An effective EHR must have an information technology team on hand to address technical issues as soon as they arise in order to minimize disruptions to patient care.
Conclusion
Having access to federal financial incentives, enhanced service quality, more convenience and efficiency, and electronic health records are just a few of the many advantageous features that both patients and providers may take advantage of. They do, however, also have a number of potential drawbacks that should be taken into consideration, such as some annoyances and inefficiencies, as well as possible privacy and cyber security concerns, the potential to unnecessarily terrify patients, increased malpractice liability concerns, and issues of cost in terms of both time and money.
