New Electronic Medical Records Software Could Improve Your Health

Posted by AMS at 14 OCT 8:03 am

Here is a simple read on how electronic medical software works in real life.

For most of my career as a family doctor, I kept track of my patients’ health histories by scribbling hand-written notes in a paper chart. For a healthy child, I’d include dates when vaccines were given; for an adult with, say, diabetes, I’d make sure to jot down a recommended schedule of blood and urine tests as well as foot and eye exams. A majority of primary care physicians, in fact, still use this kind of tracking system—despite research suggesting that these handwritten flowsheets aren’t just inefficient, but extremely vulnerable to errors. Some say the solution lies in simply switching to electronic medical records.

[6 Ways Electronic Medical Records Could Make Your Life Safer and Easier]

After all, paper charts don’t automatically update themselves when, say, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes a new vaccine recommendation. An electronic medical record system can do that and can also allow test results to be emailed or transferred automatically into a patient’s chart; paper charts rely on office administrators to input them by hand, which can lead to mistakes. I, myself, have occasionally forgotten to record that a vaccine was administered during the chaos of a busy work day. Nor did I have any systematic way of knowing how many of my patients were actually receiving the preventive and chronic care they needed.

[How to Create Your Own Personal Health Record]

But the latest research suggests that electronic health records don’t necessarily improve care unless they include interactive features: They should make it easier for doctors to implement proven guidelines for good care, providing the necessary shots and screenings, follow-up exams and treatments to help patients live longer with chronic diseases or to prevent these diseases altogether. Ideally, these records should include a software tool that periodically culls through patients’ records looking for gaps in care such as who is overdue for a cholesterol screening or flu vaccine. The system would then send out reminders to patients to come in for a test or appointment.

[Electronic Medical Records: Will Your Privacy Be Safe?

Kaiser Permanente added such a tool to their electronic medical record system several years ago and found that it works to improve care. A study published last month in the American Journal of Managed Care found that the support tool brought more diabetes and heart disease patients in for health screenings, vaccinations and medication adjustments. After three years, for patients with diabetes, the percentage of care recommendations met every month increased from 68 percent to 73 percent; for heart disease patients, the percentage rose from 64 percent to 71 percent. Another study found that tool helped more healthy patients get the recommended screening and exams for preventive care. Bottom line: This support tool lowers the rate of skipped appointments and gaps in care.

This is great news if you use Kaiser Permanente for medical care, but what if you don’t? Well, you can probably expect to see some significant changes at your doctor’s office over the next three to five years. Physicians who take advantage of government financial incentives to set up electronic medical record systems must prove they’re making “meaningful use” of the data from the health records, meaning that they’ve improved patient care as a result. But now is a good time to ask your doctor about how your records will be handled in the future. Will a fail-safe system be implemented to ensure that you don’t miss crucial office visits or screenings? If you see more than one doctor on a regular basis, find out if your primary care clinician—the one responsible for coordinating all of your care—uses a system that’s compatible with the systems your specialists use. This will make it far easier to transfer test results and updates to prescriptions back and forth between various offices. Otherwise, the responsibility for keeping your medical chart up to date will fall on your shoulders. If you’re not satisfied that your doctor is staying abreast of all these technological changes, you might want to consider switching to another practice.

By KENNY LIN
Posted: October 13, 2010

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http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/healthcare-headaches/2010/10/13/new-electronic-medical-records-software-could-improve-your-health.html

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The Debate Over Electronic Medical Records

Posted by AMS at 27 JUL 7:02 am

How the rules about electronic medical records will change our perceptions about all information technology.

After more than a year of review, the federal government has finally released its “meaningful use” guidelines for electronic medical records. For the health care field this is particularly meaningful because it’s the first step taken toward adding the kinds of consistency and efficiency through IT that most corporations take for granted.

Electronic records can eliminate duplication in testing, bring together complete medical histories, disclose adverse drug interactions, reduce errors in patient care, add transparency into a system that has been largely closed to review, and set forth best practices for treating illnesses. The meaningful use regulations allow hospitals and physicians to recoup their IT investments toward this end, at once both modernizing an antiquated health care system and helping to reduce the overhead associated with medical care.

All of this makes sense on paper. The whole purpose of IT is to improve efficiency and make information more readily available to those who are qualified to receive it. But it’s also about to set off a debate that will likely last years, if not decades, about the trade-offs between efficiency and patient care, patients’ rights and what constitutes adequate care. This is the kind of debate that hasn’t taken place outside of groups like the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association; it’s now wide open for public review.

The players in this debate will include lawyers, health care providers, insurance companies, chief information officers, chief medical information officers, chief security officers, technology companies, drug companies, lobbyists and government and private oversight agencies and committees. They will define the types of records that need to be kept, how that information is used and by whom, how it should be stored and new ways to utilize that information for improving treatment and identifying trends.

What’s not readily apparent, though, is the effect this will have on the rest of the technology world. Throughout the history of IT there has never been a national debate on how technology gets applied to problems. Decisions typically have been made based upon the needs of a particular company and the capabilities of technology producers to meet those needs. One size doesn’t fit all, and best practices often are closely guarded secrets.

To be sure, these best practices can be a competitive advantage or disadvantage, depending upon both short-term and long-term outcomes and how effectively technology is applied. Some companies have scored big with technology. Others have not. Witness the widespread use of commodity Intel ( IN TC – news – people )-based servers in the 1990s, which created massive integration headaches and caused energy use to spike unnecessarily. Those problems are only now being addressed through virtualization and outsourcing into clouds.

While the meaningful use rules are vague about the exact technology, over time they’re going to become very clear about the processes involved in standardizing records so that when a patient visits one hospital the records can be transferred from another hospital or doctor’s office. This will foster debate about technology practices that have never been out in the open, including the costs of this technology, acceptable times for implementation, upgrade schedules, as well as what works best with what and for what purpose.

In the end, meaningful use will foster meaningful debate, and that debate will reach well beyond the medical field to expose some other closely guarded secrets.

Ed Sperling is the editor of several technology trade publications and has covered technology for more than 20 years. Contact him at esperlin@yahoo.com.

Ed Sperling, 07.19.10

Global Hospital Information Systems Through 2016

Posted by AMS at 1 JUN 7:37 am

The Global Hospital Information Systems Market is Forecast to Exceed $18 Billion in 2016

PR Log (Press Release) – May 31, 2010 – The global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market was valued at $7.8 billion in 2009 and is forecast to reach $18 billion in 2016 after growing at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13% from 2009. The growth in the market is primarily driven by government initiatives, hospitals trying to increase workflow efficiency and reimbursements provided by governments. Overall, hospitals strongly believe that adopting HIS will greatly increase its efficiency and reduce medical errors, thus improving patient’s safety and quality of care. The Electronic Medical Records (EMR) segment is the largest segment in the HIS market valued at $3.4 billion in 2009 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.3% over the next seven years. Practice management was valued at $1.2 billion in 2009, and is the second largest segment, growing at a CAGR of 10.8% over the next seven years. Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), Pharmacy Information Systems (PIS) and Laboratory Information Systems (LIS) will grow at a CAGR of 12.1%, 9.7% and 10.6% respectively.

Electronic Medical Records Systems

Posted by AMS at 12 FEB 8:59 am

Do you feel like you are paying too much for your office management software? Alternatively, are you thinking about transitioning your office from traditional paper records to an electronic medical recordssystem? In either case, AMS has affordable solutions to your problems that will help your office run smoother with better cost-efficiency, freeing your hands and mind to do the work you love without worrying about the inevitable challenges of managing all of your patient information.

There are three essential categories of information that any medical office must work with:: information about patients (such as their health history, medications, labs, etc.), information about billing and insurance, and appointment scheduling information.

Right now, if you are not using any office management software, you and your staff are performing the roles of both a computer and a modern medical office. Similar to the way a computer stores and retrieves data upon request, you and your staff must retrieve charts and records, billing information, and work with manual schedules. Not only is this all time consuming, but mistakes are inevitable. By relying on our medical software to manage all of the information that you must handle, you will save countless hours and vastly reduce the potential for human error.

The potential for information sharing is one of the most significant benefits of the rise of the internet and computer technology of the past decade. With EMR medical recordsyou can harness this potential and take advantage of computer networks to electronically transmit prescriptions to pharmacies or documentation to referring physicians for updates on patient health and treatment.
If you are interested in adopting an electronic medical record system, then contact us at 800-423-8836 today!