Electronic Health Reporter

Guest post by Tim Scott, chief operating officer, American Medical Software.

There is an ample amount of evidence to back-up the notion that electronic health records (EHRs) help improve medical practice management, by ultimately increasing overall price efficiencies and cost savings within a practice. In fact, a national survey done in August of 2012 rendered the following statistics as evidence to back up this claim:

– 79 percent of providers’ report that with an EHR, their practice functions more efficiently
– 82 percent report that sending prescriptions electronically (e-prescribing) saves time
– 68 percent of providers see their EHR as an asset with recruiting physicians
– 75 percent receive lab results faster
– 70 percent report enhances in data confidentiality

These results offer an abundance of proof towards the fact that there is an obvious correlation between EHRs and overall practice efficiency, as well as general cost savings.

Now that we can provide plenty of evidence towards the notion that EHR software can result in a more effective practice, let’s look into what specific items are actually being reported by individuals. More specifically, what particular results of EHR solutions are providing them with fewer headaches in managing patient records.

In a study completed for the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, these are the main reductions and overall time-savers that stem from these profound digital records:

– Reduced transcription costs
– Reduced chart pull, storage, and re-filing costs
– Improved and more accurate reimbursement coding with improved documentation for highly compensated codes
– Reduced medical errors through better access to patient data and error prevention alerts
– Improved patent health/quality of care through better disease management and patient education

These points can, of course, be quite apparent once you implement EHR solutions into your practice. However, there is another huge benefit that is often reported by members of practices that initialize EHR solutions. That being the resulted drop in paperwork, which is often the biggest strain on office managers and administrative office workers for practices of any size. However, EHRs can streamline these tasks and create a practice that can largely benefit from this move towards a digital platform.

These real-time, patient-centered records can bring everything about a patient’s health together in one place. It is becoming easy to say that an increase in practical efficiency is inevitable when you digitalize a process. Though, in this case, you are also seeing a complimentary result of cost efficiency and added money savings through the implementation of EHR software within a practice.