How Does Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Improve Patient Care?

The usage of EMR systems has seen its peak in the last few years. With the help of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), also known as Electronic Health Records (EHRs), paper-based patient records are converted into the digital format. Several hospitals are integrating this technology to simplify and archive medical records.

Most of the new-age hospitals are implementing this technology. While EMR systems were introduced in the ecosystem in 1972 by the Regenstrief Institute, in 2008 only 9 percent of the hospitals had adopted this technology. However, according to the U.S. federal data, in 2017 the numbers had grown to 96%.

How Electronic Medical Records (EMR Systems) Improve Patient Care

According to Keith Horvath, MD, senior director for clinical transformation at the AAMC, “We’re in the infancy of using EHRs to improve patient care.” And the first step for the improvement of patient’s healthcare is to adopt new technologies such as EMR systems in India­. This shift would reduce the time taken in manual logging and making patient data portable.

This means that we need to change the methods of logging and maintaining patient records according to the technological advancements. This includes the conversion of data, such as analog paper charts to the digital form. It also ensures a shift to automated billing and claim submissions.

This is where EMR systems list their benefits. EMR systems such as Nextech EMR provide accurate charting, prescription histories, lab integration, referring letters creation, and more.

1. Ensuring Patient Safety and Well-Being

While waiting in queues in banks and convenient stores are tolerable, no one expects doing the same for getting medical attention. Every second that is lost in getting medical care would hampers the well-being of an individual. With automated scheduling systems and portals, the wait time for patients are being significantly minimised.

A robust EMR system in healthcare also helps in improving communication between medical professionals and patients, make this systematic, and improve efficiency. With features like e-prescriptions, patients can forget hassles of paperwork, especially during a medical emergency.

1. Preventing Medical Side Effects

Web-based EMR systems in healthcare provide medical professionals with the tools necessary in decision making. This helps avert the adverse effects that could arise from drug allergies, and chronic diseases such as diabetes and blood pressure.

Patient’s complete medical history, including allergies, medications, past health concerns etc., would help medical professionals chart out a thorough course of treatment for individual cases. One of the biggest advantages of electronic medical records is that, medical professionals will be able to ensure that no adversaries happen while treating the patients.

If we look at it macroscopically, data that has been recorded in the EMR could easily be shared with the concerned medical teams for team consultation and decision-making. This also ensures that all the medical professionals involved in the case have access to a detailed history of the patient.

1. Providing Access to Medical History

Patients with a complex medical record or those who have chronic diseases require special attention during treatment. With the help of EMR systems, doctors, surgeons and nurses are able to review the complete file required for an extensive case study of the patient.

Some of the best EMR systems encompass all the factors which need to be taken into account before the treatment commences. Information like familial histories, financial conditions, and other lifestyle factors including mental health and other risks can be accessed instantly with EMR systems.

1. Improving Clinical Research

The key to staying ahead when it comes to clinical research capability is utilising new technological developments to produce better results. This enable the medical circles to track on new treatment methods and disease progression.

New technologies such as an EMR system for hospitals empower medical professionals in making the optimum clinical decisions and allow the findings and results to be shared with fellow professionals and research organisations. These findings provide practical and valuable insights to improve the overall quality of patient care.

1. Forecasting and Prevention

Improvement of the quality of patient care and treatment results involve identification of those patients who haven’t taken vital screening tests. Diagnosis and tests can reveal early signs of critical diseases such as cancer.

This would also help the patients identify and act upon risks by educating themselves about EMR systems. Patients would be able to understand that identification of risks and diagnosis is easy. It is impossible for people to avoid any medical problems throughout their lives but forecasting and identifying symptoms help in prevention when it comes up as a singular problem rather than latching secondary problems along with the main ailment.

1. Transforming Clinical Processes

With the help of EMRs, medical institutions are able to provide high-quality care to help patients recover. The technology allows medical staff to track and take necessary actions to improve the health of patients even remotely.

For Instance, EpicCare EMR provides physician-friendly and fast ambulatory EMR software which is designed to assimilate patient data with the help of order management tools

With careful assessment of diagnoses of patients, practice managers will be able to focus on areas which need attention on priority, thereby reducing the waiting time. With the assistance of hospital EMR systems, tests could be done systematically, and reports can be produced more accurately.

EMRs also ensure that patients receive their medical prescriptions on time and don’t have to wait for the next step.

1. Enhancing Patient Engagement and Compliance

Patient-doctor communication is extremely important. It is really important that the medical advice and prescribed medicines are understood and implemented by the patients. Here is where the role of patient portals come up. With these, patients can keep a track of all the things that have been prescribed to them.

With the help of EMR systems, medical professionals can also address the queries posed by patients. If patients are aware and educated about the nuances of their course of treatment, it is likely that they will comply with the procedures.

1. Enhancing Access to Healthcare Data

For medical practitioners, access to data at the right time is one of the most crucial aspects of the profession.  In today’s digital ecosystem, working in sync with the medical team ensures that the course of treatment is systematic and there are no errors due to miscommunication. Hence, EMR systems are effective tools for medical practice management to keep the medical team in tandem with each other.

1. Improving Patient Care Outcomes

The healthcare system of a medical organisation can completely be transformed if it has a central repository where data can be stored and accessed from. Whether the patient is at the physician’s office or a hospital, the patient data can be accessed from anywhere.

With the patient’s medical data, it becomes easy for the professionals to access information such as medications, allergies and chronic illnesses. The information collected by the EMR technology can be used to calculate a patient’s health trends.

1. Highly Efficient & Cost-effective

One of the biggest benefits of using EMR systems is that it provides a mechanism of a coordinated care. The technology enables more accurate patient results, by eliminating the possibility of duplicate testing by enabling easier documentation.

Hence, EMR systems can help in increasing cost savings for both the medical institution as well the patients.

1. Empowering Patients

When patients are able to access their medical records anytime and at any place, they are able to manage their overall health and well-being efficiently. With the help of patient portals, patients can easily understand their drug prescriptions, lab results and also keep a track of their medical history, so that they can fix appointments and refill their drug stocks.

Concluding Remarks

EMR systems have proven to have numerous benefits associated with it and it has become a convenient and efficient way of storing medical data for patients. All medical and healthcare institutions should adopt it for hassle-free medical treatments for patients.

With the benefit of accessing a patient’s medical records anywhere, can change the healthcare scenario as we know it.