Improving Patient Care through EMRs

EMRs-Electronic Medical Records are a modern revolution in the field of healthcare improving the standards of quality in healthcare and raising it to a higher level. With all the numerous benefits of EMRs to doctors, it eventually signifies the benefits to patients and thereby improves patient care.

Using EMR in medical practice can improve patient care in the following ways:

Safe and secure medical records: Electronic medical records are safely and securely maintained in a PC in contrast to the paper-based records let out in open leading to forgery, loss of records or damage due to natural factors. Records inside the PC cannot be damaged or lost and thus a patient is tension-free with respect to the security of his records.    

Make better decisions: A patient history well maintained helps you make better decisions in your treatment. EMR is a tool to maintain such patient histories and take decisions accordingly increasing patient care.

Less time in management and more relief to patients: Paper-based records and registers pile up and become difficult to manage. Moreover, it takes a lot of time for the receptionist to search the record and hand it over to the patient. Instead through EMRs, the doctor searches the records in a single click and reduces the time spent in searching them inside the clinic. This eventually gives a relief to the patients as their waiting time is curbed.

Email the reports to non-local patients: Mailing the reports is a great way to showcase care for patients. If they are paper-based, it becomes a tedious task to deliver it to the patients who are not in the same city, state or country. However, if the doctor uses EMR and mails the reports it saves time and improves patient care. 

Reduction in chaos, happy patients: A messy clinic with cluttered papers, chaos and mismanagement gives a bad impression of the doctor and the clinic. Instead resorting to EMR with no papers lying around, a clean clinic and proper management smoothens the practice giving a good impression to the patients. 

Say no to Memory-based treatments: A memory based treatment proves dangerous for both patient and the doctor. So no more risk of giving bad treatment to your patients with EMR having records of the diagnosis and treatment available within seconds. EMR based treatments have proved safer in contrast to the memory-based treatments improving patient care.

A specialists’ and colleagues’ opinion: EMR stored inside a PC is easy to share with your fellow colleagues and specialists to discuss a rare clinical case. Paper-records require a lot of time to share as compared to an electronic record. With a handy device and a sharing access, medical record distribution is a cost-effective solution.

Handwritten Prescription Risk: A hand-written prescription can prove highly dangerous for the patient. Drugs which are spelt similarly or having a difference of few alphabets/structure are more liable to be misunderstood by the pharmacist and handing over wrong medications. Resorting to a PC-based prescription along with the record neutralize the perils of handing over some other drug increasing patient care.

Quick response to emergencies: Digitized records on a centralized server ensure quicker response to emergency situations for patients. Entire patient history can be referred by the doctor in a short time and proceed with the treatment unlike the paper-based records where it requires a lot of time to search and refer patient history.

 

Adverse Drug Reactions: Side effects of drugs if not informed to the patient can lead to a patient’s health in danger. EMR software which records ADR definitely makes you inform the patient while prescribing the drug. Patient safety and patient care ensured.             

                                             

Patient’s access to records: Giving another dimension to EMRs; from a doctor’s accessibility to patient’s accessibility of medical records, EMR is a boon to patients as well. Not only does it eases access of records in faster and simpler manner but is helpful when a patient is at different locations. A medical record integrated with a doctor’s portal is accessible worldwide limiting it only to the doctor and the corresponding patient providing patient care.

Patient Consent: Smart EMRs with consents help patients make decisions about the choices available in the treatment they are about to undergo. Issues related to patient consent are reduced with EMRs that give you options of the treatment and lets the patient beware of the risks and benefits associated.

An in-depth medical knowledge may care and cure the patient but added services like EMR will retain patient care.

 By Pooja Raval