Is Your Practice Following 21st Century’s Health Care Trends?

After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land. (Barack Obama)

Adoption of electronic health record is one of the set forth objectives for 21st Century’s Medical World; reveals a research report “Preparing For the 21st Century” by National Academy of Sciences.

Use of electronic health record, in the 21st century has become eminent. This role begins in the care process as the EHR provides patient information when needed to support clinical decisions and continues as a key information source for quality review and improvement.It can be linked to clinical-practice guidelines, clinical alerts, and up-to-date research findings to help patients and clinicians in making choices.

The goal is to revolutionize the way health care information is managed, producing better health outcomes and greater patient satisfaction. The widespread adoption of an EHR will reduce medical errors and would improve the quality of care for an estimated 3.6 million consumers.

 How does EHR make a Physician’s Life Easy?

An Electronic Health record is a computer software, which records detailed information of the patients individually. Each patient’s record can be sorted out and is available whenever required.

An EHR includes entire data of patients that is much more detailed than a patient’s file. It includes demographics, family history, medical history, medication and allergies, vital signs, immunization status, referrals, laboratory test results, radiology images, social history inclusive of smoking status, personal stats like age and weight, and billing information.  The information being taken at each visit can be put to records with date that makes the records more comprehensive and detailed.

Additionally, it also enables patients to watch their own medical records through Patient Portal. The Physician is able to restrict certain information from patients if required. The restricted information may vary from patient to patient. This is how, instead of inquiring a doctor each time, patients can login to an EHR and can watch the required details. It would save both the physician’s and patient’s time.

 Have You Applied for $44000 Incentive?

As per US government policy, physicians, who are using a certified EHR, may receive up to $44,000 over 2011 to 2014. Whereas, Medicaid Incentives will also be available to all non-hospital based clinicians. Practices that are not actively using and reporting with a certified EHR will have their Medicare fee schedule reduced by 1% in 2015, 2% in 2016 and 3% in 2017.

Therefore, it has become mandatory for US physicians to use a Meaningful Use Certified EHR. EHR, that is an Electronic Health Record, can be defined as a systematic collection of electronic health information about individual patients. Doctors will have all the data of patients recorded electronically. There will not be any hassle to manage files and also to search the data of patients visited a long time ago. Each patient is just at a distance of a click and the physicians can easily have the access to the entire record.