Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can improve health care quality. EHRs can also make health care more convenient for providers and patients.
Improved HealthCare Quality and Convenience for Providers
1. Instant access to patient records from inpatient and remote locations for more coordinated, efficient care
2. Improved decision support, clinical alerts, reminders, and medical data
3. Performance-improving tools, with real-time quality reporting
4. Legible, complete documentation that facilitates accurate coding and billing
5. Interfaces with labs, registries, and other EHRs
6. Safer, more reliable medication prescribing
Improved Health Care Quality and Convenience for Patients
1. Diminished need to fill out the same forms at each office visit
2. Reliable point-of-care data and reminders notifying providers of important health interventions
3. Convenience of e-prescriptions electronically sent to a pharmacy
4. Patient portals with online interaction for healthcare providers
5. Electronic referrals allowing easier access to follow-up care with specialists
EHRs Improve Data Availability
Utilizing EHR technology, patients’ health data is available in one place, when and where it is needed. Healthcare roviders have access to the data they need, at the time they need it to make a decision.
EHRs Can Be the Basis for Quality Improvements
Reliable access to complete patient health data is essential for safe and effective care.
Accurate and complete data about patients’ health and medical history is at providers’ fingertips.
Providers give the best possible care, at the point of care. This leads to a better patient experience and, better patient outcomes.
Practices using EHRs report that they utilize extracted reports on patient and disease registries to track patient care as well as facilitate quality improvement discussions during clinical meetings.
EHRs Strengthen Provider Decision Making
Providers make efficient, effective decisions about patient care
Improved aggregation, analysis, and communication of patient data
Clinical alerts and reminders
Support for diagnostic and therapeutic decisions
Built-in safeguards against potential adverse events
Health Care Convenience Matters
Providers with busy practices—and patients with busy lives—appreciate convenience in their health care transactions.
EHRs can help.
With e-prescribing, patients can have their prescriptions ordered and ready even before they leave the provider’s office.
Providers and their staff can often file insurance claims immediately from the provider’s office.
And providers may be able to access patient files or submit prescriptions remotely—from home or while on vacation.
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