What Is EHR Software System?

EHR software is a computer application, helping healthcare providers with medical records management and automatic clinical workflows. Hospital EHR systems is a care coordination tool letting medical professionals check their patients’ medical history instantly and provide e-prescriptions instantly. The software provides clinical dashboards, chart templates and electronic documents for optimizing patients’ treatment and ensuring operational efficiency.

Electronic medical records software offers a comprehensive view of patient information along with communication tools for organizing and prioritizing the practice workflows. Medical charting systems with inbuilt charting tools help with preparing the patient encounter notes.

Why Use EHR Systems in Healthcare?

• Empowering patients- EHR systems empower the patients to manage all their health details and diagnostics using the inbuilt patient portal. They feel more involved and encouraged to maintain their health stats and prescriptions.
• Patient welfare & reduced costs for hospitals- EHR software includes predefined notes for maintaining a well-coordinated healthcare system and ensuring patient welfare. These are entirely automated and clinical staff can make use of these for efficient patient care.
• Centralized storage- Electronic health records software with superior EHR technology stores a patient’s information in a centralized database for quick access by the concerned healthcare teams and doctors. This is critical for improving the outcome of a patient’s care.
• Patient compliance- Hospital EHR systems provide a transparent system to track diagnosis, medication, etc. It lets patients stay aware of all steps in their treatment process. This ensures effective patient compliance and trust in the medical journey.
• Helps avoid occurrence of preventable diseases- EHR systems in healthcare have been helping doctors provide value-based services to their patients. Doctors can track the medical history of every patient and provide timely treatment to avoid the worst.
• Streamlined clinical process- EMR software systems with their superior EHR technology help medical professionals connect virtually with lab technicians, administrative staff and physicians. This is essential for not missing out any patient details and making the right diagnosis.
• Simplified workflows- Patients with a long history of illness or those suffering from chronic illnesses would have long medical records. Medical charting systems record even the most complex of these details in a comprehensive file for preparing the right treatment plan.
• Helps prevent any chance of side effects- EHR systems continuously track patient records and the response to new medicines. It keeps a record of ongoing medications and allergies. Patient history, pharmaceutical info and drug contradictions, all these details are stored efficiently by the software.

How Does EHR Software Work

The working of EHR software system is simple. EHR programs upload the patient data to a centralized database online. It works with the QR code or access ID (provided to the patient at the time of registering). The doctor accesses the patient’s details based on the given code or ID.

Doctors with access to the EHR system can add details regarding prescriptions of patients, payment details, treatment routine, charts, lab results and notes. Data exchanged during the diagnostic process is secure and updated from time to time.

Electronic health records software provides reports about patient outcomes for healthcare setups to rack their performance and revenue. Further, EHR software provides a patient portal where patients can fill out their intake form and mention all important details like medical history, allergies, age, etc.

Essential Features of EHR Software

• Charting: Hospital EHR systems provide charting capabilities with template support for preparing digital records of patients’ diagnosis and medical issues. You can merge all patient details about a patient’s health under a single chart.
• Patient portal: Patient portals with medical charting systems allow patients to manage their lab results, medication details & history, and the details of doctor visits at a single platform. Patients can access their medical records anytime to ensure better health outcomes.
• E-prescribing: EHR software helps print all prescriptions electronically and transmit them to the selected pharmacies. All further interactions with the pharmacies generate automatic notifications for the health care professionals to see.
• Order entries: EMR software can be used for entering and transmitting orders for medications, laboratory tests and such. All lab test reports and medication records can be maintained at the patient portal.
• Patient appointment: EHR systems provide the performance reports for identifying the operational bottlenecks and managing peak appointment hours. These metrics are critical for improving the services related to appointments, check-ins and patient waiting times.
• CQM reporting: CQM (clinical quality measures) reporting in EHR software supports drilldown information regarding quality of services offered, efficacy of current patient health care mechanisms, etc. These are critical for making improvements in the existing healthcare system, undertaking immediate medical action and providing long-term patient care management.
• Claims management: Hospital EHR systems help with management of claims starting from full imbursement to charge captures. It also provides a single-click display option for collecting payments, patient information, and copays.
• Custom healthcare plans: EHR software systems provide custom healthcare plans for managing the health of patients based on their age, diagnosis, sex and lab results.  Also, available are healthcare analytics for evaluating the efficacy of clinical outcomes and healthcare processes.
• Data submission: EMR systems can be used for transmitting electronically the population health data of the patient to cancer, immunization and public health registries.
• Patient rooming: Medical charting systems offer patient rooming facilities so that the hospital staff can easily help a patient get comfortable with her or his clinical surroundings, much before the doctor comes to take charge.

Benefits of Using EHR Software

• Dashboard for performance indicators: Electronic health records software offers a powerful dashboard for checking a physician’s performance indicators such as exceptions, exclusions, numerators, rates and denominators.
• Fast task completion: Electronic medical records software offers actionable lists comprising high-priority and critical patients who need to be addressed immediately. You also get access to immediate alerts and consolidated views for immediately dealing with urgent cases.
• Auto-alerts for patient engagement: EHR systems in healthcare help with auto alerts such as appointment reminders, lab order notifications and prescription refills for engaging patients to participate positively in their treatment journey.
• Improved patient relationships: Medical charting systems let you segment patients based on their medical needs and helps connect with them on an individual basis. You can also use the software for sending personalized greetings, healthcare reminders and get well soon message cards.
• Sending business communications: You can use hospital EHR systems for sending business communications regarding office changes, new schedules, altered payment information and more.
• Minimal medical errors: EHR systems in healthcare organize such critical patient data as drug history, charts, prescriptions, allergies, symptoms and treatment details into a digitized system. This is critical because with time these details keep adding up and manual data entry can lead to human errors.
• Enhanced productivity: There are templates & wizards for efficient document management of patient records. Physicians can refer to medical records quickly and cater to more patients in less time. Further, doctors can use the software for collaborating with other medical teams while examining patients. Further, the staff can prevent instances of duplicate testing and save resources.

How to Choose the Best EHR Systems

Check for the integration with medical systems: EHR software that integrates easily with the existing applications on your device would reduce the hassle of doing repetitive data entries. Plus, there would be automatic data syncing. So, choose an electronic health records software offering apps integration.

Look out for relevant features: Select only those vendors providing the best feature sets and critical modules because very often many features lie unused.

Whether you want it for general vs special practice: Electronic health records software offers interfaces and chart templates based on general or special practice. The option makes job easy for the staff too. Make sure that you select an EMR program based on your practice needs.

Find out how it will improve the operational efficiency: EHR software systems are to be based on the latest technology in order to avoid errors as this may lead to inefficient patient care. It is very important to check that the EMR program that you select doesn’t function on obsolete technologies.

Ask for compliance assurance: Compliance assurances save you from legal tussles. EMR software systems with security and compliance mean secured access rights and data storage locations.

How Does EHR Software Improve the Quality of Patient Care

• Patient involvement: EHR programs records healthcare details regarding diagnostics and lab test results, vaccination history and medicine’s information for better patient care.
  As patients get easy access to their treatment information from any device and location, they get more involved in their treatment process. The best hospital EHR systems also ensures easy communication between patients and doctors to discuss the treatment related queries.
• Decision-making: Reliable EHR systems in healthcare tracks regularly the patient records for existing allergies, etc. The module immediately notifies the doctors if there is some contradiction between the medicines prescribed and the existing allergy or health condition of a patient.
  EHR systems in healthcare support easy coordination and record sharing amongst the patient care staff. Clinical staff finds EHR software helpful in delegating their responsibilities as now the information is accessible to all in real-time. 
• Streamlined workflows: EMR software offers automated modules for managing multiple tasks like fixing appointments, forwarding patient reminders, and facilitating medicine refills. The software streamlines daily workflows of the hospital staff and physicians thereby permitting healthcare providers prioritise the patients’ medical needs.
• Faster & accurate e-Prescriptions: EHR software systems with their powerful e-prescription module ensures that patients get the right medicines on time. The feature makes the entire experience of buying medicines a convenient one as the medications are packaged and ready for pickup as and when the patient visits the pharmacy.
  Patients find convenient that they never have to wait at the medicine counter as the prescription reaches well before them. Pharmacies too find the e-prescribing options convenient as there are less to no ordering errors.

Accurate clinical diagnosis: EMR software systems record all information securely in the electronic database for further analysis by medical professionals. This information is shared with the medical staff and research teams for making the best clinical and patient decisions.
The software has therefore been helping medical teams gather the data related to disease progression and treatment plans for qualitative decision-making. All this together contributes towards better patient outcomes.

Why Use EHR Systems in Healthcare

EHR systems are proving beneficial in healthcare systems for both patients and medical practitioners alike. Let us have a look at the benefit of the software for both, patients, and medical practitioners.

EHR Software for patients:

• Sharing accurate and consistent health information with the doctors
• Quick access to health records from any location
• Reduced possibility of repetitive medical tests
• Reduced hassle of paperwork
• Automated generation of insurance claims

EHR Software for medical practitioners:

• Easy access to patient information
• Secured data exchange amongst the concerned medical teams
• Eliminating confusions and misunderstandings
• Better diagnostics with limited to zero errors
• Accurate prescriptions
• Streamlined billing processes
• Complete data compliance

How to Use EHR Software

EHR or EMR software helps patients and medical professionals in multiple ways. In short, it makes the overall diagnosis fast and accurate. Here’re the functions you can perform with EHR system:

• Implementing a patient - cantered approach- EHR software lets doctors calculate the number of hours given to patients and the total working time invested in screen gazing. This helps avoid unnecessary time wastage and focus more on patient care and treatment.
• Recording every detail of patients - EMR systems let you focus on your patient and record every detail automatically to ensure the right treatment & decision-making. You can enter the data while interacting with the patient, such as lab test results, etc.
• Improving patient confidence - EMR programs in one way help improve patient confidence by involving patients in their treatment. Medical records can be shown to the patients for analysis & discussion of the treatment plan.
• Efficient medical practice - Electronic health records software stores all information regarding existing health problems and previous concerns. This way medical professionals have all the information ready at their disposal right before they start patient diagnosis or treatment.
• Templates for charting - EHR software gives access to templates for charting a patient’s findings, visits, and referrals.
• Managing the patient data - EMR software helps enter all your patient details and you can direct these to the relevant clinical topics as the patient continues to explain the problem. This way patient health concerns are discussed in detail and physicians too can undertake the right scientific inquiry.