Why do clinics need an EMR? The immediate objectives that come to mind are:
a. To reduce expenses and enhance efficiency.
b. Increase bottom line.
c. Improve patient-physician relationship.
The above can be said to pretty much cover the whole of gamut of benefits derived from the successful implementation of an EMR software. Today, the EMR penetration rate is lingering around the 30% mark, but it is expected to increase to 80% by 2016. Let us look at each of these benefits in greater detail.
Reduced Expenses and Enhanced Efficiency:
EMRs eventually improve E&M coding accuracy and compliance and enable the input of correct medical data, diagnoses, and procedure codes. You can also avoid under-coding and over-coding. By ultimately increasing efficiency thus, it increases the accuracies of your e-claim unlike traditional paper claims. This reduces the percentage of denials and also decreases the effort spent on coding research.
Increased Bottom line:
Adoption of an EMR/EHR means your clinic would be eligible for the Medicare and Medicaid incentive as part of the HITECH Act. One also reduces infrastructural costs such as bulky file cabinets, folders, and reams of paper. Also avoiding the use of these frees up valuable office space. The labor costs are slashed, since you would surely not need as many personnel to do paperless billing, and the same can also be outsourced to cost-effective medical billing companies.
Improved Patient-Physician Relationship:
The EMR interface is wonderful, as any physician who has used it would vouch. It really makes it very simple for the physician to pull up patient information during the course of an interaction. The physician has all the pertinent data, including digital scans in some cases, at his fingertips, to answer every question posed by the patient. There is no more of the “silent treatment” given to patients as the physician burrows deep into the patient’s paper file to locate the right information.
For more in depth information on choosing your own EMR please call us at 1-888-571-9069 or email steve@billingparadise.com.
