The specialists, clinicians, doctors, and health practitioners who have been working for years have as their main goal in their career, helping people. But this gesture does not stop right there. The professionals who work in the administrative office, front desk, billing, cleaning service, and other divisions in the health care industry must have the same thoughts.
Patient care is the center of activity in the medical industry. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on the quality of the services to make sure that their delivery is good and responsible.
Besides helping others, healthcare providers also weigh their activities from a business point of view. Business speaking, they need to have great systems to stay competitive. That means they will need to think about hiring the best specialists and staff, streamlining the services, improving the quality, and focusing on patient-oriented practices.
There are a lot of variables that could determine the outcomes of healthcare services. The patient experience should be on the main objective list of the healthcare provider. But it is often overlooked by many healthcare organizations.
Most health experts agree that EHR Integration can help them deliver a better patient experience. But how exactly is the EHR integration going to nail it? What is its relevance to the improvement of patient care and experience?
Here are the four ways EHR integration can improve the patient experience.
EHR integration can improve communication.
The good quality of the EHR in healthcare includes the accessibility to the patient portal. This portal is an effective way for patients to make contact with their physicians, pay bills, get health information, and do other important things.
The healthcare provider must create a haven for patients where they can check their health records, lab test results, planned treatments in the future, and the channels for communicating with the specialists and relevant healthcare services. The patient portal is private yet transparent for the patients and their health specialists.
It is a quick and seamless solution that is a win-win perk. Both doctors and patients will not have any difficulties in arranging the meetings. Rather than waiting in line and waiting for hours to receive the lab results, the patients can simply enter the patient portal and see the information. The practitioners will also be able to input into the EHR and interact with the patients without having to meet in person.
Patients will have the freedom to check on their results, records, and other crucial information without having to go miles to the clinic or hospital. On the other hand, patients will also be updated all the time about their health information. People will want to keep track of their health status. And EHR integration can make it happen for them.
EHR integration can improve the security of patients’ data.
With the right EHR integration, patients’ health information and rights can be protected. The healthcare industry has regulations and standards that are purposely designed to protect patients’ rights and privacies.
One of the most popular sets of standards is HIPAA. In a nutshell, this governs healthcare providers’ keeping their patients’ health information safe when they are conducting contact, data management, care services, transfers, and other relevant activities. However, it is important to rely on the electronic medical records of the patients. They need more protection.
Once the personal health information is stored in the EHR, it is possible that the data can exist in different locations, both offline and online. There is no clear record to show how many times the data has been accessed.
In this case, quality EHR integration will step in to fill the gaps by securing personal health information. It is important to tag along the internal and external vendors to track the users’ health actions and protect their privacy.
Improved service delivery with EHR Integration
EHR integration has the potential to significantly improve healthcare services. If you’ve ever been a patient in a hospital, there could be a point where you needed to wait for hours until you got your room to stay there.
Well, you are not alone. There are a lot of emergency patients who are spending hours in their emergency rooms before they get the treatment they need. It does not only halt productivity in the healthcare industry but also disappoints patients.
Reviewers complained about long wait times for getting rooms, receiving lab results, transfers, invoice payment, and so on in approximately 80% of the complaints in SEA hospitals. appointments are the last thing that customers want from healthcare service providers.
EHR Integration is a huge game-changer. This integration can sync the relevant components of health services like labs, insurance, drug stores, pharmacists, and other health offices in interoperability to streamline the information exchange. There will be no long waiting time, which displeases the customers.
With EHR Integration, you can reduce the likelihood of redundancies and errors
Appropriate EHR integration can reduce medical errors effectively. Did you know that medical errors are responsible for over 251K deaths in the US on an annual basis? Keep in mind that this number is pulled from a developed nation. Although we might see a lower number in underdeveloped countries, it is simply because many healthcare providers were not honest with their data. Medical errors can happen in any way when healthcare providers practice their activities and solutions. But the healthcare systems are under great pressure to do what they can to reduce the numbers and save more lives.
It has been proven many times that EHR integration is the solution to reduce the risk of errors, redundancies, and other problems in the health industry. There is a need for an interoperable solution that allows the users to get information from multiple sources and faucets to allow them to perform accurate analytics and make informed decisions based on the responsible medical records and information of the patients. EHR integration enables clinicians to act based on ethics and regulations, as well as more accurate judgment, which improves patient outcomes.
Are you part of the EHR integration movement? Reach out to CareAlign now for further information.
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