Clinical Benefits of Electronic
Medical Records - EMR
Published: September 26th, 2005
By: John Deutsch
- EMR Experts
As the 2nd part to our earlier article "Financial
Benefits of Electronic Medical Records" we will
explore the clinical benefits of Electronic
Medical Records. We have summarized these into 3
categories:
1. Improved Clinical
Decision Making
2. Enhanced Documentation
3. Better Patient Care
Clinical
Benefit #1 - Improved Clinical Decision Making
- Decision Support
Features
- Adverse Drug Event Avoidance
- Health Maintenance Reminders
- Access to a More Complete Patient Record
Electronic
Medical Record Software is packed with many tools
to help doctors make betters decisions. These range
from diagnosis to prescribing medications to treatment
plan recommendations. Most EMR's
have built in PDR-based medication dictionaries, these
provide doctors with Adverse Drug Event (ADE) alerts,
generic drug recommendations and dosage recommendations.
EMR's
can also make treatment recommendations based off a
patients' diagnosis.
Clinical
Benefit #2 - Enhanced Documentation
- Improved Accuracy
- Improved Legibility
- Improved Completeness
- Improved Security
- Tailored Patient Education
- Advanced Reporting Capabilities
Through the use of computer network technology permits more than one
user to access a patient's chart at the same time. This
helps ensure a more complete and accurate chart as all
the information can be entered in real-time. With the
new HIPAA laws, many offices using paper charts are
exposing themselves to unnecessary risks. Most EMR's
come equipped with a security administration module
enabling administrators to manage access to patient
records through user permissions. One of the greatest
advantages to having patient documentation digitized
is the ability to manipulate data for reporting capabilities.
This becomes very useful for research reports, statistics,
drug recalls and patient marketing.
Clinical
Benefit #3 - Better Patient Care
Finally, the benefit
of offering better patient care through the addition
of all these new features may be the greatest benefit.
Many doctors are now taking advantage of the internet
to conduct web consultations. Being able to access patient
data from anywhere in the world via a secure connection
even allows the doctor to conduct web consultations
or generate reports from home.
John Deutsch is the founder of EMR
Experts www.emrexperts.com, a medical software consulting
firm specializing in EMR
Software solutions, located in San Diego, CA. He
can be reached at john@emrexperts.com
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