How Are Electronic Health Records Used In Healthcare?

An electronic health record is an ideal solution for the ever-changing health infrastructure. Electronic health records speed up the procedures of medical treatment. It starts the process by monitoring vitals, symptoms, and diagnoses, and then it takes notes on the prescriptions and treatments. This way, it creates daily health records for each patient the doctors attend to.

People say, what's the big deal? It only has the potential to store health records. Can't it be done more simply? What is the need to waste money on it? We all know that a health facility has two different sections to be taken care of - administrative and medical. So it is not only the health records that EHR prepares.

However, it takes care of the entire administrative and medical workload centrally, including billing, preparing health records, preparing electronic claims for insured persons, etc. So it is an e-prescription software that smoothens and quickens the medical treatment process. Let's dig deep into the EHR and understand it better.

Benefits of EHR

It replaces manual notes on paper, reducing the cost of paper for the health facility. But there is a bigger picture of where EHR serves. The benefits of EHR are given below.

• In emergencies, when there is no time to read long notes, EHR comes to aid in such scenarios. The detailed and optimised health note helps doctors act quickly with the patient's health history. Thus EHRs can be a lifesaver for many.
• There is a bare minimum chance of error or negligence. Plenty of times, it happens that while billing or preparing claims, hospital staff make some huge errors. But in the case of EHRs, there is no chance for such errors. Thus it plays a vital role in maintaining the reputation of a hospital.
• A detailed medical history helps doctors catch up with a patient's condition and treat the patient more efficiently.
• It streamlines the administrative sections by eliminating any chances of miscommunication or confusion.
• It is a secure system that can only be accessed by patients and their consulting doctors or hospitals.
• For some reason, you had to move to another city. Then you can ask the health facility to transfer your health record to the current consulting doctor. This way, neither your data is recovered nor the doctor's time is saved.
• EHR system is of benefit in ways that it helps patients save time and energy by not going through the same tests again and again. It also makes the treatment cost-effective for patients.

Key Components of EHR

Here is a list of the key components that an EHR contains.

1. Patient Administration Tool
   The EHRs first and foremost component is the Patient administration tool. A patient's priority data, i.e., vitals, symptoms, etc., are recorded here. These data are recorded for each patient, and to avoid confusion, each patient is allotted a unique id. If names are taken as the validating id, then it might create havoc as one name is used by many peoples.
   It will again prove to be a worthless process, but unique ids save EHR from getting worthless. Every time you go for a checkup, your complete data is entered and stored, keeping your health records up-to-date. This way, it keeps taking data and arranging it properly to avoid any kind of mishappening.
2. Clinical Tool
   The patient administration tool is the input tool where all the data are collected, which is passed on to the consulting doctor. The clinical tool comes with a set of features that helps the doctors understand the patient's condition with the help of analytics tools, decision support tools, etc. In this way, it streamlines the process of checking the patients.
   Once doctors are done with analysing the condition of patients, clinical tools support them with the prescribing section. Here doctors enter the prescription, including tests and medicines. This will help the patients to complete the tests quickly because of the notification sent beforehand to the labs.
   Similarly, pharmacies are sent notifications to get prepared with the required medicines. It reduces the hectic waiting time for the patients and helps them to reach back home and rest to recover sooner.
3. Protected Notifications and Risk Alerts
   Once the data, such as vitals, symptoms, diagnoses, etc., are recorded. EHRs notify the patients beforehand about the follow-up checkup that they should pay attention to. It also speeds up the process in case of any emergency by sending risk alerts to the team of doctors and nurses, thus cutting off the traditionally time-consuming process.
   It also has the option when a team of doctors cannot handle the situation to send risk alerts to other doctors to seek tips and save the patient. The doctors can connect using the call feature of EHR, and the alerts are sent using another part of e-prescription software, i.e., alert notification.
4. Finance Handling DashBoards
   The administration section of a hospital handles finance handling dashboards. It is a tool for hospitals to manage their business. Finance handling has features to forecast profits and their conditions in industry, and it also comes with insight-giving tools where financial tips are provided based on the analytics indications.
5. Revenue Cycle Management Tool
   It is essential to streamline the billing section, or else you will keep having losses you cannot trace back. The revenue cycle management tool has a proper billing and accounts section where no bill is addressed. After the bills are properly prepared by matching them with the prescriptions, there remains no place for losses.
   Then these bills are stored in the system, and the revenues generated are considered and totalled daily to ensure nothing goes wrong. The study suggests the Revenue cycle management tool makes up 29% more revenue than the manual billing and revenue section.
6. Online Prescription Tool
   The online prescription tool is a promising feature of EHR. Patients can receive their prescriptions via email or whatever communication channel is available. It also allows medical professionals to view patients' health records and make changes if necessary. This tool helps reduce paperwork and lets medical professionals work faster and more efficiently. Moreover, this tool allows patients to order their medications online from their homes. This helps in saving time and money. Furthermore, medical professionals can easily track the progress of each patient's health records with this tool.
7. Health Monitoring Tool
   The health monitoring tool is an excellent way for medical professionals to track the progress of their patient's health conditions. This tool can follow vital signs and other essential health parameters like blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, etc. It also can generate reports that can help medical professionals to make decisions based on the data. This tool also helps keep track of the patient's progress and respond quickly to any changes in their health conditions.

Uses of EHR

Let's take a look at the different uses of EHR,

• It is used to prepare transparent bills, which will help to prepare electronic reports to claim insurance money.
• It has proved to be helpful in the recovery of patients because of its patient management tools.
• The recorded data can be helpful in the research field to understand the different diseases - how they behave. Based on which medicines and different treatment methods could be discovered.
• Even corporations use Electronic health reports to check their offices' health conditions and keep them healthy in case they sense any health hazard.

Conclusion

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have revolutionised how healthcare professionals treat and care for their patients. They provide a secure and accurate way of storing patient data, enable doctors to provide better care through their analytics features, support decision-making with clinical tools, send protected notifications and risk alerts, handle finances using dashboards and provide a revenue cycle management tool. EHRs are also used to prepare transparent bills, manage patient recovery, support medical research, and monitor office health. EHRs are invaluable for healthcare professionals and institutions to provide better patient care.

FAQs

Is it worth installing an EHR system?
EHR systems will prove profitable to you in many ways. It will help doctors to take less time for each patient. This way, more patients will be treated. More patients indicate more revenue.
Then it will also help your hospital to be preferred by many because they don't have to wait longer. It will also help to avoid miscalculations in the revenue and accounts section. Thus overall it will earn you more profits.

How much will EHR installation cost me?
EHR is expensive software, costing around $15000 to $70000. But it varies from one software to another. There is subscription-based software as well. So first, research the pricing structure of different e-prescription software and then get one for your health facility.

I run a small nursing home. Do I need to get an EHR?
It depends on your needs. There are different EHR software for all large, medium, and small-scale hospitals. Thus, if you run a small-scale hospital or nursing home, choose the suitable EHR software.