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  • Writer's pictureNimesh Gandhi

How The Performance Of Your EMR System Affects You


Electronic Medical Records are being used by healthcare service providers to manage healthcare better and for greater customer engagement. When patients use patient portals or Electronic Medical Records systems, they face a lesser need to be admitted to the hospital as their requirements are fulfilled in the confines of their homes through remote healthcare.


Patient relationships are said to be the key to excellent healthcare services and satisfactory experiences for patients. The physicians and healthcare practitioners who maintain healthy relationships with their patients make them feel important and valued. This, in turn, leads to longer retention of patients for any healthcare provider.


Some measures of patient experience also reveal important problems like gaps in communication and delays in crucial healthcare tasks such as returning lab results, etc. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has thus included a new provision for measuring patient experiences and reporting their feedback. The act will be implemented by 2019.


EMR systems need to be quick and real-time


Many healthcare providers are moving towards the EMR systems that help their patients to capture real-time data concerning their health, such as, the way they at any given moment, and any anomalies in their illness, symptoms, etc. This system is expected to help patients record the changes in their bodies in real-time, rather than remembering everything that happened in the span of a month for their monthly appointments.


This step will ensure that the patients' data is carefully and comprehensively studies as these symptoms are revealed and captured in real-time by the patients.


The accuracy of the data will also enhance, undoubtedly, as patients will record symptoms and illnesses as they happen. Previously, most of the data that was crucial to a patient's healthcare had to be remembered by the patient for their appointments, and in the process, most of the data was either changed, or made lesser or higher in intensity as the patients recalled it at a later point in time.


EMR systems are also enabling the exchange of information between patients and their healthcare providers as and when the need be. Through text messages and emails, patients are getting aware of their conditions and getting their queries resolved any time of the day.

Patient Healthcare Systems are another kind of patient portals that are helping patients become more involved in their healthcare and allowing them to get a sense of control over their well-being.


System productivity affects healthcare


A study that was recently conducted by the University of California found that the productivity of physicians dropped as a result of some unprecedented causes in their EMR systems. Documentation workloads for the physicians have increased as a result of the growing use of EMR system. While previously, the recorded information would be to-the-point and precise, today patients record each and every happening in their daily lives, and thus, physicians; the job of documenting all of the information for further study has led to degrading their productivity.

Also, when it comes to continuous updates in the patient's data, there has to be someone who is deemed responsible for updating the information from time to time. For example, if all of the problems that a patient faces is listed down in the EMR system, such as, cholesterol, diabetes, fatigue, etc., then a person needs to update the information regarding all these problems regularly.


This continuous need for update ad the accountability of the updates renders to be an issue with the current EMR systems.


Another performance issue is when the interoperability between EMRs is desired. The primary healthcare provider should be able to track the patient's data throughout the healthcare system. This is a significant concern as hospitals are still reluctant to partner with each other to open the lines of communication.

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