For over two decades, electronic health records, or EHRs have continued to drive productivity and efficiency gains in the healthcare sector. With records of a patient’s diagnosis, detailed medical history, and ongoing medications, EHR systems are essentially operating systems for hospitals and healthcare service providers.
In recent years, EHRs have continued to unlock value for practitioners with a slew of features that document every aspect of patient care, resulting in higher claims or revenues per patient. In this article, we look at the latest trends and innovations and the broader state of this segment, which practitioners and industry professionals should know about.
Why Should Healthcare Institutions Use EHRs?
Electronic health records provide a more seamless flow of information within the healthcare establishment while transforming how care is delivered and compensated for.
Regarding enhancing productivity, revenues, and profitability, here are some ways an EHR fits perfectly into the equation.
- Increase Care Providers’ Productivity
Caretakers and physicians can work more efficiently and in a more coordinated manner when they get quick and reliable access to patient records, even remotely.
Alongside medical information, EHRs provide clinical alerts and reminders, offering an enhanced decision support system, substantially improving the productivity of care providers.
Furthermore, EHRs improve collaboration among specialists, laboratories, and other care team members, reducing duplication of work and unnecessary paperwork. EHRs can also integrate with systems from other healthcare institutions for effortless documentation and workflows, leading to better patient outcomes.
- Reduce Expenses & Administrative Bloat
It is estimated that medical failures and the financial costs of poor productivity can amount to $1 trillion in losses yearly. As we discussed earlier, EHR software can significantly improve productivity and minimize these losses.
Becoming paperless has its own set of advantages. It simplifies office administration work by saving you a lot of money that would have been spent on supply expenses, transcription costs, and the time and space needed for storing paper records.
Reducing administrative costs and increasing productivity means that healthcare personnel can tend to more patients. Enabling physicians to see more patients every day will undoubtedly bring higher revenue while lowering the cost of care for patients.
- Improve Patient Satisfaction
The seamless flow of information and quick instantaneous communications often lead to better patient outcomes. As such, a well-implemented EHR system can substantially enhance patient satisfaction rates.
An EHR substantially reduces medical errors and flawed decision-making due to miscommunications between physicians, patients, and care providers.
Modern variants of an EHR enable telemedicine, e-pharmacies, and more, all aimed at delivering value and convenience for patients. In an increasingly competitive healthcare landscape, such value additions are vital for retaining patients and generating repeat business.
- Increase Claims & Revenues Per Patient
By documenting every aspect of a patient’s care, from consultations and diagnostics to procedures, and recovery, hospitals, and healthcare practitioners can make the most of what they are owed, substantially enhancing their gross revenues per patient.Â
Over the ordinary course of business, at least 15% of legitimate claims are left on the table each year, which EHR solutions strive to unlock with better documentation and evidence. The tools also help plan value-added services to enhance non-insurance patient revenues, such as room upgrades.
Bottom Line
EHRs have created remarkable value for the broader healthcare industry since their inception two decades ago, but they are just getting started in many ways. Unlike other off-the-shelf software solutions, there are a couple of specific steps to implement an EHR, with certain specifications to fine-tune the solution to requirements. Still, the result is often worth it.
Hospitals are often rife with inefficiencies, and administrative bloat, adding to the total cost of care. Still, with the rise of AI, AR, and ML, substantial efficiency gains are set to be realized over the coming decade, which will eventually be passed on to patients.
