Electronic Health Records Impact Healthcare Today
Our daily routine has been greatly transformed electronically and digitally for a more improved way of life. Many industries have started to adapt and embrace change through advanced technologies including the healthcare industry.
The shift from paper records to healthcare software known as Electronic Health Records (EHR) has brought a major change to medical industry. According to Statista, the total global EHR market is predicted to reach 40 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, doubling its size in 2015.
EHR development has drastically improved the healthcare industry over the years in many ways including a more efficient workflow for healthcare providers and refined patient care and safety.
The EHR software provides a higher quality of service for both practitioners and patients, which results in increase of positive outcomes. In 2014, 75% of physicians responded to the National Physician Survey for using EHR. In 2017, 80.5% of hospitals have started basic EHR adoption, which is a 5.3 percentage point increase.
Overall, Electronic Health Record system has continuously been recognized as a surefire way of improving healthcare systems.
EHRs continue to show the benefits in the improvement of patient care through a more secure yet accessible record system. Aside from that, it also helps enhance care coordination between healthcare providers and patients while encouraging patients to be more engaged in their journey to health.
6 Ways EHR Improves Quality of Care
1. Patient Safety and High Quality of Service
In the healthcare industry, time is one of the most important things to consider may it be an emergency or not. Thus, decreasing the wait time for patients helps promote the idea that these healthcare providers genuinely care and value the time and state of health of each individual dealing with them. This does not only develop trust but also creates an improved environment for healthcare providers and patients.
Furthermore, EHR tracks records of patients' medications, allergies, and medical history that saves tons of time on documenting data.
EHR also includes e-prescribing and identification of at-risk possibilities for patients. It provides a better system of communication and ensures patient safety and satisfaction.
2. Enriched Portability and Sharing for Patients and Healthcare Providers
Today, it is crucial that patients and their healthcare providers are on the same page. Patients have different doctors they're seeing for different medical conditions.
Medical professionals who provide healthcare services range from cardiologists, ophthalmologists to oncologists and dermatologists, which creates demand for building a patient's full medical history.
A single physician for a particular case may only know the details that the patients recall, however with EHR, the patient's history, diagnosis, and treatments are well provided.
Electronic medical records improve patient care as this system allows both the patient and the physician to share records and ensure that the information is updated while the patient's chain of care is well understood.
With enriched portability and information sharing brought by EHR, patients are also able to review and understand their medical standing and prepare follow-up questions for the next visits.
EHR provides a complete list of medications, financial circumstances, environmental challenges, familial histories, mental health status, lifestyle risk factors, and past surgical events.
3. Improved Patient Engagement
Having an effective instrument for communication in the field of healthcare is one of the key roles in improving patient engagement in their medical conditions.
EHR enables patients to get access to patient portals that deem helpful to patients and healthcare providers alike. These portals provide all of the patient's medical history including records, prescriptions, and treatments. Patients can also review their cases and further educate themselves that help them prevent chronic conditions and achieve positive medical results.
4. Efficient Clinical Research Quality
With accessible electronic health records, physicians and healthcare providers are able to improve clinical research quality. EHR uses analytic features such as the ability to generate population groups, review active conditions of patients, and track drug trial participation.
The data can be used by healthcare providers to easily identify disease progression and pinpoint effective treatment plans. Aside from that, it benefits the healthcare community as they share results and facts with colleagues, peers and research facilities for patients' better care quality in future patient encounters.
5. Preventable Disease Management for Patients
EHR provides preventive measures in order to manage different diseases better by identifying important screening examinations a patient must take. With this, life-threatening diseases such as cancer and organ problems can be checked early on so treatments can be administered immediately if and when early signs of diseases are detected. This creates a more positive quality of life through healthcare efficiency as early intervention can dramatically reduce the risks of certain diseases.
6. Astounding Patient Care Outcomes
Expanding electronic health record usage among patients is beneficial for patients and healthcare providers.
With the ability to gather health-related data, patients eligible for preventive health measures and even those who are currently taking prescribed medications for specific illnesses can deem useful for prevention of life-threatening repercussions. Clinical studies fed on the data from EHR help improve health conditions provided that EHR has the capacity to detect patterns on potentially related adverse effects and risk factors. By utilizing the data, healthcare practitioners get more accurate information, which makes a positive impact on medical outcomes.
To Sum It Up
Electronic Health Records continue to improve and flourish over time though there is some reluctance to accepting the EHRs as a concept by healthcare organizations.
EHR has been instrumental in the transformation and improvement of the healthcare industry.
Having this technology in data gathering is greatly helpful in the workflow improvement and in delivering quality patient care.
