Electronic Medical Records: The need of the hour
Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are a way through which
the face of medical healthcare industry is changing rapidly. In the last 5
years or so, practices across the country have adopted EMR and EHR solutions to
streamline not only their own operations, but also revolutionize the industry
overall.
In addition to EMRs, Practice Management and medical billing software are also assisting the practices across U.S. and the industry is moving
towards greater avenues.
Importance of Electronic Medical Records is the need of the
hour. The government is introducing the much-debated healthcare act, Obamacare,
which will further streamline the entire industry. The importance of EMR could
be understood from the fact that medical practices can now save more time through
the software and do not need to spend unnecessary time on paper work. According
to a survey, doctors lose up to 10 hours per week if they use paper-based
systems for their practice. In comparison, nurses who have been using EHR
systems, have seen a decrease in their documentation time by as much as 45%.
Such stats are only reflective of the fact that doctors can
now spend valuable time on direct patient care and have increased patient
engagement through their patient portals. Because the medical practitioners get
to spend more time with their patients, they can give better and quality care
which ultimately enables them to qualify for many federal incentives.
Using EHR/EMR software also enables practices to gear
themselves up for ICD-10 and Meaningful Use, a pre-requisite for the upcoming
Accountable Care Organizations model in Obamacare. And practices also do not
have a lot of time up their sleeves. They only have until October 1, 2014 to
implement Electronic Medical Records system in their practices. It is about
time they started doing it now since implementation, training, setup and coding
can take up to a year to complete.
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