The pandemic is posing great difficulties for hospitals that are still dependent on documenting patient records on paper, nothing wrong with that, paper records are fine, but when you have a pandemic, and high volumes of patients, think of the stress on physicians who are seeing high volumes of patients, and are documenting their medical conditions on paper.
Physicians Illegible Handwritten Notes
As it is, a lot of debate on the legibility of notes written by physicians have taken place over the past many years, poor medical handwriting has been a challenge in healthcare ever since the practice of documenting patient visits started. Physicians illegible handwriting is not only a major issue within the office, it extends outside as well.
Many pharmacists have to call the doctors back to understand a prescription handed over to a patient. There are many instances where a doctor’s illegible handwriting was mis-read by a pharmacist, and wrong medication was sold to the patient. On the other hand, implementing an EMR, this becomes a non-issue, because prescriptions are either printed or ePrescribed.
Even though these are basic benefits of implementing an EMR, they are time-savers, considering the volume of patients currently visiting hospitals, and if pharmacists or billing staff have to spend valuable time deciphering a physician’s hand written notes, surely this would negatively reflect on patient care.
An EMR implementation not only resolves illegible handwriting issues, other features such as appointment scheduling, charting, billing, a patient portal, reporting, and patient workflow management improves the overall functionality of the health system.
Manual appointment scheduling for example would require a patient to call the front desk over the telephone to schedule an appointment, the front desk staff will have to maintain an old fashioned approach of maintaining an appointment scheduling book to coordinate schedules between different patients and doctors, and possibly rely on a dedicated staffer to maintain a comprehensive schedule to ensure appointments do not overlap.
In the current pandemic scenario of a lockdown, staff shortages have overburdened the task of the limited staff working in hospitals, and if they have to manually make patient appointment notes, gather patient information, handle insurance documentation, manage front desk operations, collect payments, and maintain inventory, imagine the resulting chaotic workflow, and the pitiable working conditions of the limited hospital staff handling high volumes of patients.
Transitioning from Paper to Electronic Improves Accessibility
Importantly, transitioning from paper to electronic records not only improves accessibility, it also enhances the security of medical records. The risk factor of maintaining paper records increases two-fold, firstly gaining access to record storage areas or records left on counters, exam rooms or copy machines.
The staff have to manually file paper records, and consider the large volumes of records, and the likelihood of the records being incorrectly filed, getting misplaced, or never being returned to the file room. Comparatively, electronic records seldom get lost, since they are never removed from the EHR system. Besides, EHR records are diligently indexed in different modes, facilitating fast searches and convenient retrievals.
COVID-19 and EMR
In the current scenario under the shadow of COVID-19, it’s become convenient for networked hospitals to pool data from digital records systems, enabling doctors to retrieve and share information determining which coronavirus treatments are assisting patients to recover.
Volumes of data are being harnessed to understand which treatments work best. However, hospitals that have not implemented EMR may not be able to replicate similar utilities to treat COVID-19 patients.
Every step doctors are taking to treat COVID-19 patients are being documented in EHRs, beginning with medicines prescribed to signs of recovery or setbacks. From the data that is being gathered from a large number of patients, doctors can determine which treatments are succeeding.
FREE EMR Safe & Secure
FREE EMR financial benefits
Patient data remains much more secure in an EMR environment, with access to only authorised personnel. Confidential patient information remains absolutely secure through strong encryption protocols. Comparatively, paper records can easily be breached without being detected, and pose a greater security risk.
Data Encryption Ensures Safety
Paper records are open for anyone to see, they can be copied, scanned, and faxed to a third party, while robust encryption methods secure crucial patient information stored digitally on EMRs. Health organizations have to comply with HIPAA and other privacy regulations, making electronic health records much more secure maintaining confidentiality over paper records.
Here are some of the potential benefits implementing a FREE EMR. First and foremost, if the hospital were to invest in an EMR, they would have to spend close to $ 163,765, then there would be setup costs and other associated cost. On the other hand, a FREE EMR entails ZERO costs. Besides financial gains, implementing EMR changes the entire spectrum of clininical operations, whether it is admissions, treatments or lab tests, an EMR
- Rapidly speeds up the information flow and delivers service efficiently.
- Improves Coding & Billing Accuracy
- Improves Charge Capture
- Streamline Documentation of Patient Encounters
- Lowers administrative and maintenance costs of healthcare institutions.
- Lowers transcription costs.
- Malpractices in Insurance Premiums can be Monitored.
- Minimises staff, saving salary and overtime costs.
The pandemic has severely affected the cash flow of hospitals and practices, draining financial resources of every health organization, with physicians experiencing burn-outs, and clinical and non-clinical staff shortages adding to the distress. Implementing a FREE EMR in these circumstance s will to some extent mitigate the distress, with the COVID situation getting out of hand, and no timeline possible to determine when the pandemic can be contained, small and mid-sized hospital administrators should certainly consider the viability of implementing a ZERO cost EMR, without hurting their finances.
