Loves getting creative with mundane topics in addition to geeking out over books and movies.
How To Build An EHR System In 2023
Loves getting creative with mundane topics in addition to geeking out over books and movies.
With the ever-growing transformation that current technology offers to various industries, the hospital industry giants are also approaching it to improvise their standards with new advanced systems. The healthcare field functions well with new tech support systems, from consultation to managing healthcare data and physician-patient communication. The EHR( Electronic Health Record) tool is significant in streamlining the healthcare world. Considering the convenience the EHR system ensures, it is expected for the EHR market to hit 52.98 billion USD by 2027 at a 9 % CAGR.
The healthcare field is performing incredibly with the advancement of CRMs, telehealth, and EHR software development. As a result, it strongly influences the entire healthcare ecosystem. Be it the doctors, patients, and business owners; everyone gets a better share of this tech advancement.
As we move forward in this article, we will talk about what EHR is as a system tool. And what benefits do all the healthcare parties get from it? Before moving on to the apparent conclusion, we will also go through ways to build an EHR system in the current scenario.
What Is An EHR System Software?
EHR stands for Electronic Health Record, and as the name suggests, EHR is an entire digitalized software containing important information about a patient’s health. Data like Medical history, test results, medications, lab data, progress notes, etc., about a patient, are included in an EHR record.
Along with EHR, some might have heard of another term, EMR, and more often than not, it is used interchangeably. However, they are different from each other. Unlike EHR, EMR ( Electronic Medical Record ) is a digitized record of the patient’s chart kept inside a clinic which typically reveals the medical and treatment past of the patient during one practice. Such information is not for the public in general.
What Are The Features of An EHR Software?
Although EHR software is built according to the medical facility’s needs and individual functionalities, there are some must-have features across every EHR software that is in use:
- Data Management – to provide a portal for doctors and patients to upload and manage data across multiple formats, making it convenient for both parties.
- Patient Data – that includes name, address, and critical information like diagnosis, prescribed medicine, and test results, giving insight into a patient’s ongoing health.
- Controlling Data Access – One of the essential features is to have a mechanism that controls data access and not let two different people access patient data. For example, a nurse can’t have access to the same data as the doctors.
- Scheduling Appointment – An ideal EHR allows a patient to schedule a real-time appointment with the doctor, and the doctor can check the same in their dashboard with patient information.
- Prescription Monitoring – keeping track of medical history and prescribing medicines to patients who are remotely located.
- Reporting – It helps doctors know about patient demographic data that includes treatment conducted and the success rate of treatment. For patients, it helps in the graphical representation of how the treatment is going and the future appointments.
- Labs Integration – Integrating Labs with EHR software makes it easy to exchange lab reports and convenient for doctors and patients to access them in real-time and take further action.
- Invoicing – The treatment process includes invoicing, claims, and payments, making the process complex and challenging. Automated EHR software makes all such activities convenient for monitoring and paying for the same.
Why Having An EHR System Crucial?
As we advance with the modern world, we need a modern approach to deal with our crucial functions. Even if we don’t use the technology much, we need the advancement for convenience as and when needed. In healthcare, it is highly required to ensure that daily operations are accurate and convenient. As a result, an ideal EHR system comes into the picture to ensure three main factors:
- Ensuring Efficiency
To deal with an enormous number of patients, doctors need a reliable system that offers efficiency only to make the patient experience better with convenience. Hence, an EHR system ensures faster decision-making, minimizes medical records storage space, improves employee morale, and avoids unnecessary labor.
- Cost Optimization
With the EHR system replacing the old-school style of dealing with patient records, you do not need to worry about the data and functioning of the workflow every time. Opting for an EHR system drives out utmost value to health organizations.
- Ensures Patients Turnover
Installing an EHR system and using it to offer accurate and reliable information with desired patient care eventually increases trust and loyalty amongst patients. Also, it ensures a solid doctor-patient relationship.
How is an EHR System Profitable to its Primary Stakeholders as an Ecosystem?
The primary stakeholders are Businesses, Hospitals, and Patients who collectively benefit from an EHR system’s co-operating ecosystem.
Businesses – With an effective EHR system in place, businesses are sure to customize the system according to their needs and functions. The scope of customization makes the EHR software system innovative and profitable across medical bodies worldwide.
Also, the monetization options like pay-per-usage, subscription, and paid software features make it convenient for the users and profitable for businesses.
Hospitals – Since the main agenda for developing an EHR system is to make hospitals work better and more efficiently, it helps a medical body in various ways. An EHR system ensures Better operational efficiency, preventing medical errors, low operational and hiring costs, securing data with minimal paper use, and building trust between doctors and patients.
Patients – With proper EHR software in place, it is easy for patients to access their treatment process, details and information, test results, and other information in their comfort, and doesn’t need to store all this information in duplicate with them.
What Are The Challenges For An EHR System?
While EHR as a system proves to be an incredible tool for patients and doctors, it still has some challenges.
How To Build An EHR System In 2023?
Amid the prime challenges, building a full-proof EHR system requires you to prepare for complicated steps ahead. Considering that, we suggest you follow the below-mentioned steps.
- HIPAA/GDPR Compliance
HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act and has many rules and regulations that your EHR solution must comply with. HIPAA wants your EHR system to ensure the confidentiality and safety of sensitive health data. Consider HIPAA if you want to serve the US market.
Consider following GDPR rules and regulations when dealing with EU-based patients. Being a part of the healthcare profession, ensure your patient that you are handling his data under GDPR compliance.
- A Mobile-Friendly EHR
Undoubtedly, having a go-to experience is what everyone prefers to have. In healthcare, a patient would also prefer to be involved with all the treatment processes and information. It offers clarity and makes the physician-patient trust strong in case of a long treatment period. Considering the accessibility and portability, having a mobile-friendly EHR tool supported by both ios and Android is a must as more and more patients can indulge in their treatment process.
- A Certified EHR System
To build trust in patients, creating a credible image is highly significant. You can’t afford a system to practice illegally and risk your EHR tool’s reliability and safety measures.
For US-based patients, you need to be certified under ONC-ATCB certification. An Office of the National Coordinator – Authorized Testing and Certification Bodies ensures that an EHR system meets all the required standards and is safe to use.
Whereas, for EU-based patients, you need to certify under EuroRec Certification, that almost ensures the same safety rules and regulations.
- Compliance With Standards and Protocols
Building an EHR system requires you to comply with some standards and protocols for transferring healthcare data. There is no set rule for complying with it as it entirely depends on your requirement of the EHR software and the territory you serve it. These standards are CCA, CCD, CCR, and HL7.
- Transferring Mandatory Information
To move required data from old records to new EHR software, hospital owners need to hire employees for this routine task. An admin is also required to upload the medical history data of the patients and monitor EHR software.
- Monitoring EHR Software Performance
As you allow the public to use the EHR software, you must monitor its performance and likeability amongst the users based on the below-mentioned metrics:
- Satisfactory Physicians.
- Track data error rates to assess and improve the quality of the EHR software.
- ROI calculations to evaluate profitability.
- Collect software feedback from patients to ensure quality care.
- Record outcomes to understand efficiency.
- Sync With Apple Health Records
In the US, Apple offers users their respective health records with complete visualization and safety. Currently, all US-based healthcare organizations are supported by Apple Health Records, and to extend the benefits of EHR software, it is best to sync with Apple health records. It allows all doctors and patients to find, collect, and assess all the health data in one place and offers future assistance to the EHR system with development and implementation.
Conclusion
The fact is we need an EHR system that can completely transform the way a healthcare industry functions. We need patients to approach doctors for their treatment with complete information with full trust. An EHR system, if built satisfactorily and meeting all the standards and protocols, will surely make the administration focus more on handling patients. It adds convenience, ensures the healthcare industry grows, and meets the world’s expectations.
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