Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are comprehensive, patient-focused digital repositories that offer authorised users real-time access to secure medical information.
In addition to housing patients’ medical and treatment histories, EHR systems are designed to capture a broader spectrum of a patient’s care, encompassing not only clinical data typically obtained in a healthcare provider’s setting but also a more holistic view of the patient’s overall well-being and healthcare journey.
Basic Features Of An EHR System
- Contains a patient’s medical history, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, immunisation dates, allergies, radiology images, and laboratory and test results.
- Allow access to evidence-based tools, such as nursing care plans, medical diagnoses management systems, and drug prescription management systems, that providers can use to make patient care decisions and enhance care delivery.
- Automate and streamline provider workflow, increasing efficiency.
How Electronic Health Records Impact Patient Care
Improved Patient Care
- Electronic health records (EHRs) can improve health care quality. Access to comprehensive patient information in EHRs enables providers to make well-informed care decisions quickly, improving care and reducing safety risks.
- EHRs can also make health care more convenient for providers and patients.
- Quick access to patient records from inpatient and remote locations for more coordinated, efficient care.
- EHR systems can serve as patient portals that allow providers and patients to interact online.
- Enhanced decision support, clinical alerts, reminders, and medical information
Increase Patient Participation
- Patients and healthcare providers can benefit from mutually accessing electronic health information as it enables them to communicate and make well-informed decisions together.
- This collaboration is particularly crucial when managing chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, and obesity, where patient involvement plays a significant role in effective treatment and care management.
- Create an avenue for patient communication: Healthcare providers can promptly identify and address emerging symptoms or concerns by establishing quick and easy communication channels. This proactive approach allows providers to offer timely assistance and fosters a stronger patient-provider relationship, ultimately leading to improved healthcare outcomes.
Improved Care Coordination
- Electronic health record (EHR) systems play a critical role in reducing care fragmentation by enhancing care coordination.
- They can seamlessly integrate and organise comprehensive patient health information and enable its instantaneous dissemination to all authorised healthcare providers participating in a patient’s care.
- This facilitates better communication and collaboration among healthcare professionals, ultimately improving the quality of care and patient outcomes.
- Electronic Health Records (EHRs) enable all healthcare providers to access consistent, comprehensive, and real-time information about a patient’s medical history and treatment. This functionality is particularly crucial for patients who consult various specialists, undergo emergency medical care, or move between different healthcare facilities or settings.
Improved Diagnostics & Patient Outcomes
- Electronic Health Records (EHRs) offer providers convenient access to a patient’s complete health history, including vital information such as medications and allergies.
- This comprehensive oversight enables quicker diagnosis of patients’ conditions.
- Moreover, a proficient EHR maintains a patient’s medication and allergy records and automatically checks for potential conflicts when a new medication is prescribed, alerting the clinician of any issues.
- Information documented by a primary care provider in an EHR can inform emergency department clinicians about a patient’s life-threatening allergies, enabling the emergency staff to adjust their care accordingly, even if the patient cannot communicate.
- EHRs effectively identify potential safety concerns as they arise, allowing providers to address issues promptly and prevent more serious repercussions for patients. This ultimately leads to improved patient outcomes.
- Furthermore, EHRs assist providers in quickly and systematically identifying and rectifying operational problems, thus enhancing operational efficiency. In contrast, identifying and correcting such issues in a paper-based setting is much more challenging and time-consuming.
Practice Efficiencies & Cost Savings
- EHRs streamline administrative duties, significantly cutting down time spent on paperwork.
- They help avoid test duplication by giving clinicians access to previous results, saving time and resources.
- They also speed up billing and reimbursement processes, improving the transparency and effectiveness of financial dealings in healthcare, thereby saving costs and reducing patient financial burdens.
Other vital ways EHR impacts patient care:
- Enhancing data security. Digital security measures in EHRs offer robust protection with features like encryption, secure authentication, and audit trails. The systems also include data backup and disaster recovery functionalities, ensuring continuous availability and integrity of health data for seamless record exchange.
- The EMR technology gives healthcare providers information in formats that were impossible with the paper system.
- Facilitating Research and Data Analysis.
In Conclusion
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have significantly transformed patient care by improving care quality, increasing patient participation, enhancing care coordination, enabling better diagnostics, and promoting practice efficiencies.
The implementation of EHR systems has streamlined administrative tasks, allowed for better communication and collaboration among healthcare professionals, and facilitated quick and systematic identification of operational issues.
Additionally, EHRs have played a crucial role in reducing care fragmentation and improving patient outcomes by providing quick access to comprehensive patient information and enabling real-time patient health monitoring.
Furthermore, the impact of EHRs extends to cost savings and financial transparency in healthcare. EHRs have helped reduce healthcare costs by streamlining billing and reimbursement processes, avoiding test duplication, and improving the overall efficiency of financial dealings in healthcare. By providing clinicians with quick and easy access to evidence-based tools and patients’ complete health histories, EHRs have significantly enhanced the decision-making process, leading to improved healthcare outcomes and patient safety.
EHRs have revolutionised how patient information is accessed, managed, and utilised in healthcare settings, ultimately contributing to a more patient-centred, efficient, and effective healthcare system.
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Selected References
- Dziuba, A., & Dziuba, A. (2024, June 7). The impact of electronic health records on modern healthcare. Relevant Software. https://relevant.software/blog/the-impact-of-electronic-health-records/
- Medical practice efficiencies & cost savings | HealthIT.gov. (n.d.). https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-and-health-information-exchange-basics/medical-practice-efficiencies-cost-savings
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