Saturday, January 10, 2009
Free EMRs to Bail Out US Healthcare - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com
Free EMRs to Bail Out US Healthcare - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com: "PracticeFusion, for example, offers a free EMR service that is hosted online and requires no additional infrastructure, nor expensive IT people to support it. It might not be the answer for everyone (on the other hand, maybe it is!), but the fact is that a lot of software is free and is being practically used in a host of industries. Having found success with the initial release, PracticeFusion this week will be making available version 2.0 of its EMR suite (shown below). Ryan Howard, CEO of PracticeFusion, tells Medgadget that the new EMR version is based on Adobe's Flash technology, and it includes features for patient demographic, diagnosis and medication management, vital gathering, SOAP note creation, along with integrated video-based training. In addition, Practice Fusion supports Mozilla Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome and Apple/Mac Safari 3 browsers."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Get A Free IVF Second Opinion
Dr Malpani would be happy to provide a second opinion on your problem.
Consult Now!
Electronic Medical Records (EMR), also known as Health IT, are treatment platforms that allow significant patient variables to be integrated into their care to assure the treatment they receive is reasonable and necessary, presuming the data is accurate. In addition, EMRs prevent medical errors potentially, which cause about 100,000 deaths a year.
ReplyDeletePresent medical records on documents are digitized and integrated into the EMR. EMRs are desirable in the medical community in that they allow access to evidence-based clinical information in this knowledge system. In addition, EMRs provide patient safety, regulatory and reporting needs, reimbursement requirements, and provide a strong ROI for clients.
The first large demonstration of the effectiveness of EMRs was with the VA Hospital’s Vista System. The code was written by doctors for doctors, and has about 18000 pages. Author Phillip Longman wrote a book about this system and the quality it allowed for superior health care entitled, “Best Care Anywhere.” The Vista is the largest EMR in the United States
In addition to EMRs containing the patient's progressive medical history, the patient's safety and unbeneficial events that occurs at times, such as repeat diagnostic testing, or medical errors of varying degrees, will be reduced. For the health care provider, the need for transcription of patient notes is eliminated. Preventative medicine and compliance with treatment regimens are more assured with EMRs.
With some debate, there will be increased profits for both health care providers and medical institutions due to EMRs offering the most diagnostic and procedural codes allowable for a particular patient. These codes are used to seek reimbursement from health care payers.
The continuity of patient care improves the care of patients and reduces the need of additional patient care staff, which at times is inadequate due to shortages of such needed professionals. The EMR provides flexibility of architecture to meet individual workflow requirements at each location.
Evidence-based medicine and patient-centered healthcare are now possible and improved by EMRs. The many benefits perceived by others and EMRs has resulted in various managed care companies to actually pay health care providers to adopt EMRs in their practice.
However, health care providers who are in solo practice are understandably reluctant to acquire an EMR due to cost, which may be between 30 and 40 thousand dollars per doctor. The EMRs are a 20 billion dollar a year industry. A complete EMR package would include hardware, software, installation, maintenance, and training.
4 primary functions of EMRs include electronic prescribing, which is more efficacious in reducing prescription errors that cause over 5 thousand deaths a year. Electronic prescribing also lets the health care provider know if there is a generic version of the drug available, and if the patient’s pharmacy insurance benefit covers the drug chosen by the health care provider.
Also, ordering diagnostic tests, and retaining the results of these tests, documentation from the doctor about their patient after a visit, and thankfully improve data availability for health care professionals to retrieve regarding their patients.
Aside from having great ability to store information and data, as well as the EMR having user-friendly navigation, the EMR should have the following core functionalities: Health information and data, ability to manage results, order entry, provide decision support, and good communication with other devices.
The process of implementing EMRs within a medical facility include hardware, software, installation, maintenance, and training. The first massive system of EMRs occurred with VA hospitals who installed a Vista system. The original code was written by doctors for doctors, and has over 18 thousand pages in this system.
Additional patient benefits because of EMRs and patient care is that, in some studies, mortality of patients has been decreased between 35 and 45 percent. Also, those patients with chronic disease, which takes up 80 percent of health care spending, becomes more efficient due to the benefits of improving treatment for such patients.
Eighty percent of people surveyed favor EMRs more than they do a health care provider visit. Presently, those who have access to EMRs range in ages of those in their late teens, to those in their early 90s, so the EMRs are user friendly. Users have the ability to advance their medical knowledge. This may likely improve their health and their medical issues by acquiring this knowledge,
Dan Abshear
EMRs have lot many advantages like:
ReplyDeletePaper records can be easily lost. We have heard how fires, floods and other natural catastrophes destroy physical records of many years, data which are lost forever. Digital records can be stored virtually forever and can be kept long after the physical records are gone. EMRs also help keep records of health information that patients tend to forget with time, i.e. inoculations, previous illnesses and medications.
use of EHRs supposedly reduces errors in medical records. There is no doubt that handwritten records are subject to lots of human errors due to misspelling, illegibility, and differing terminologies. With the use of EMRs standardization of patient health records may eventually become acheivable.
Nowadays many doctors are now taking advantage of the internet to conduct web consultations. we able to access patient data from anywhere in the world via a secure connection even allows the doctor to conduct web consultations or generate reports from home. Health maintenance reminders that can be automatically generated from an EMR system also contribute to providing improved patient care.
ReplyDelete