Introduction
According to Dr Richard Nahas, patients are now used to their doctors taking down notes on their computers during visits. While the shift from paper to digital systems is apparent, the move also birthed Electronic Medical Records. Let’s check out some of their benefits.
The Benefits
- Cost-effective and efficient – Electronic medical records combined with integrated communications methods can help hospitals, clinics, surgery centres and other healthcare facilities to cut down on administrative expenses significantly. It can reduce or eliminate physical chart storage, and the need for transcriptions and streamline coding and claims management. Moreover, it is significantly quicker compared to hard-copy communications between pharmacies, labs and health planners.
- Streamlined workflows – Electronic medical records increase both efficiency and productivity while reducing paper waste and paperwork. Both the staff and patients need to fill out fewer forms and that means clinicians and doctors have more time to see patients. Even prescriptions and referrals can be sent quickly and that helps reduce processes like pickups and redundant appointments.
Moreover, this allows healthcare facilities to create automatic reminders for their patients when it’s time for annual checkups and alert them as important milestones inch closer. Even insurance claims, patient tracking and billing are processed and filed ahead of schedule with the help of electronic medical records.
- A comprehensive view of the patient – Maintaining medical records used to be very difficult before the digital transition. That means doctors and staff often had to deal with missing pieces of information or conduct expensive tests to fill the data gap. Electronic medical records make it much easier to maintain a single and continuous record of each patient that gives a more holistic view of their overall health. This allows doctors and healthcare professionals to provide better diagnoses and long-term treatment with fewer complications.
- Data is powerful – With continuous data collection, a lot more can be achieved. Apart from providing patients with more personalized care, data collected from various patients can help identify new trends and makes it easy to figure out which part of the population is more exposed to certain diseases.
Such an infinite amount of data allows for better analysis and preventative care than ever possible, given that the data can be randomized, and the privacy of individual patients is protected. That means outbreaks could be predicted and controlled before they become pandemics and more prominent flu strains can be identified with each season.
- Reduce errors – Electronic medical records and digital in nature and that means documentation of patient interaction can be standardised and better tracked with fewer risks of errors. With higher penetration of digital paper trails, pharmacists and patients won’t recommend or take the wrong medication due to unintelligible handwriting. Moreover, interactive systems can be set up to flag harmful medication according to the patient’s medical history.
Conclusion
Dr Richard Nahas believes that electronic medical records are quite efficient. They make healthcare more transparent for everyone in the chain and allow patients and healthcare professionals to share and maintain electronic medical records more easily.
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