Importance of Electronic Health Records

EHRs are the next development in healthcare that can improve the connection between patients and doctors. The health records will help professionals make better decisions and deliver better treatment because it is timely and readily available.

What are Electronic Health Records?

Electronic Health Records (EHR) is an electronic version of a patient's medical history maintained by the healthcare professional. An EHR may contain all the administrative and clinical data pertinent to that person's care under a specific provider, including demographics, progress notes, issues, prescriptions, vital signs, past medical history, immunisations, laboratory information, and radiology results.

The EHR automates information access and can improve clinical workflow. Through various connections, the EHR can also directly or indirectly support other care-related activities, such as quality control, outcomes reporting, and evidence-based decision support.

Features of EHR

Any EHR system provides some fundamental and essential features.

• To begin with, EHR platforms frequently provide a patient portal where users can access information and permit the safe sharing of data with other healthcare companies.
• EHRs often place patient care orders for clinicians, including requests for diagnostic tests and prescription orders.
• EHRs provide the capability to monitor medication dosages for a set of patients and notify doctors of any potential drug concerns. Additionally, the systems can manage order sets, outcomes, patient authorisations and consents.
• EHR systems frequently assist in coordinating clinician workflow management and scheduling.
• These systems help with clinical, financial, and administrative coding. Support for service requests and reimbursement claims are included in this feature.

EHR Key Benefits

The importance of EHRs can be portrayed through their ability of electronic information sharing. This can help you provide patients with higher-quality care while making tangible benefits to your organisations.

Benefits of EHR for Healthcare Providers

• Health Analytics: Most EHRs offer doctors health analytics that supports pattern recognition, diagnosis prediction, and treatment recommendation.
  
• Increased Effectiveness: Medical practitioners can quickly transfer patient data to other departments or providers, which reduces errors and improves results management.
  
• Increased Care Quality: Through electronic prescribing, health practitioners can communicate directly with pharmacies, which lessens errors and saves time by removing lost prescriptions.
  
• Increased Revenue: Electronic health records (EHR) can give doctors additional time during patient visits and enable them to see more patients throughout the workday when appropriately implemented.

Benefits of EHR for Patients

EHRs can benefit patient care in many ways.

• Improve record clarity: EHR can decrease the likelihood of medical errors by enhancing the precision and transparency of medical records.
  
• Availability of health information: By increasing access to health information, cutting down on redundant tests, and speeding up treatment, the patients are empowered to make better decisions.
  
• Reduces medical errors: Medical errors are reduced by making medical records more precise and clear.
  
• Better health care: Through EHR, patients can improve themselves in various aspects, including safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, education, communication, thoroughness, efficiency, and fairness.
• Encourages healthier lifestyle: Patients are encouraged to have healthier lifestyles via EHR usage, covering improved nutrition, avoiding behavioural hazards, and more widespread use of preventative treatment.

How EHRs improve patient care?

EHRs can enhance patient care in various ways.

Providing access to the patient's health data can help with diagnosis by giving practitioners a thorough picture and speeding up the diagnosis process.

Additionally, EHRs can enable better results by minimising medical errors and improving patient safety. EHRs send and store data, but they also alter patient data in valuable ways and give it to the practitioner at the time of care.

EHRs can also assist in bettering public health outcomes by giving doctors access to the health data of the entire patient group, enabling them to highlight specific risk factors and enhance results.

What are the driving factors behind the need for EHRs in physician practices and hospitals?

Below are the driving factors required for EHRs in physician practices and hospitals!

The future of EHRs

According to experts, several EHR expansions need to be implemented. There are a few modifications that experts anticipate in the future EHRs:

• Improving patient engagement
• Enabling more precise medical treatment
• Work on incorporating remote monitoring
• Enhancing transparency
• Easing a load of data entering
• Bringing together a patient's story in a more thorough manner
• Improving patient engagement
• Providing more precise medical treatment
• Work on integrating remote monitoring
• Delivering care with a greater focus on the patient

Conclusion

EHR strives to digitise your medical records so that they are uniform among all of your healthcare providers. In an EHR system, doctors take notes that may later be accessed, read, and expanded upon by other doctors.

With advanced technology and the right choice, it comes up with the perfect opportunity for EHRs to make a more connected healthcare experience. Hence, you can easily understand the importance of electronic health records and their practices by downloading Eka Care app. This app has complete instructions for logging in, recording your details, and interacting with your doctors easily.

FAQs

What is an EHR?

EHR stands for Electronic Health Record. An EHR is a computer-based electronic (digital) collection that contains a person's medical data. A patient's medical history, including diagnoses, medications, tests, allergies, vaccines, and treatment plans, is all recorded in an electronic health record.

Who can see electronic health records?

The patient's electronic health records are accessible to all healthcare professionals providing care for the patient and can be utilised to make suggestions about the patient's care.

What are the ways EHRs will help me?

EHRs can improve your care because they boost doctor-patient communication and treatment coordination. Some ways they can assist are as follows:

• Fewer mistakes: EHR software enables practitioners to be thorough and quick, offering a sequence of prompts and dropdown menus to navigate through without making any mistakes.
• Education: Access to your medical records enables you to be active in your care. You can check for errors, view test results, monitor your glucose levels if you have diabetes, and review the advice given to you by your medical team.
• Security: Paper records might go missing, get misplaced, or end up damaged. Electronic records are less likely to be lost, and most are password-protected, ensuring that nobody else can access them.

Can everyone see my records?

No one can view your records as confidential information protected by your password. Only the practitioners you are dealing with can have access to it.

Why are EHRs important to us?

EHRs allow your medical professionals to monitor the therapy you've experienced over time. EHRs simplify your whole healthcare team's access to the same information by storing your health status and medical history in a secure electronic format. Ideally, this leads to better care coordination, which will benefit your treatment and general health.

What are the benefits of EHRs in health care?

• Give complete, accurate, and updated patient health details.
• Enable instant access to patient records to improve efficiency and coordination of care.
• Boost output and work-life balance for providers.
• Make prescriptions more reliable.
• Aid in patient diagnosis, reduce medical mistakes and promote safer care.
• Boost interaction and communication between patients and medical professionals.
• Give patient data protection and security.

What features of EHR will help manage my health information digitally?

• EHR enables data sharing with other healthcare professionals across numerous healthcare companies.
• With the help of the EHR system, you can exchange information with clinics, laboratories, imaging centres, experts, etc.
• Even doctors and clinicians can engage in better patient care.

What are the types of EHR Systems?

There are four types of EHR Systems. Each system offers varying degrees of functionality depending on the features needed by a particular hospital.

• Physician-hosted
• Cloud-based
• Subsidised remote
• Remotely based

How should I choose an EHR system for my organisation?

While choosing an EHR system for your organisation, you need to follow the key steps:

• Find decision-makers
• Make goals clear
• Create a request for a proposal
• Choose the RFP receipts
• Analyse the RFPs
• Attend vendor demonstrations
• Verify references
• Give ranking to vendors
• Make site visits
• Select a vendor
• Strengthen organisational commitment
• Discuss a contract

What is the importance of EMR?

EMR systems gather, compile, and record their medical data to inform you of the importance of electronic medical records. The doctor may also consult them during a visit to provide better care.