Making the Transition to Paperless Medical Records
Making the Transition to Paperless Medical Records
The U.S. government is actively supporting the computerization of medical records. President Obama hopes to encourage a complete transition to paperless medical records by 2014 and his economic stimulus package contains substantial incentives for healthcare providers to do so. Furthermore, as a penalty, caregivers treating Medicare and Medicaid patients who do not make this shift within five years could lose some of their regular government funding.
While the benefits of computerized medical records cannot be emphasized enough, the process of transition does not come without its fair share of challenges.
The most basic issue is getting everyone across a healthcare facility to consider a practice management system as beneficial. For many, learning to use one is an unnecessary waste of time and effort. Due to this, a few healthcare facilities face a peculiar dilemma: while some physicians have enthusiastically joined the paperless bandwagon, others flatly refuse, causing nurses to keep track of each individual's preferences.
Those against computerization have valid reasons as well. Transferring old records onto a computer is a tedious task, demanding time and attention to high accuracy levels. Records may date back to over two decades and most hospitals do not have the large budgets needed to capture these. Practically speaking, physicians would access less than 5% of these records over the next five years, making them question the point of all the effort.
A cost-effective solution to this issue is to employ the services of a document management storage provider with advanced imagining capabilities. This provider would manage large volumes of paper-based records and deliver them electronically on demand.
Complying with federal requirements of meaningful use for stimulus funding is another challenge faced by physicians today. Thankfully, many top providers of EMR solutions have built-in stimulus dashboards, which help caregivers track and measure their meaningful use levels.
Many find it is too early to shift to computerized medical records because legislations are not yet in place and meaningful use' is an ambiguous concept. On the other hand, installing, learning and implementing an EMR system takes time, and the risk of waiting may be higher than that of plunging in.
While the challenges cannot be overlooked, caregivers should not ignore the myriad of benefits of computerized medical records either. The electronic system stores millions of medical records on a single, centralized database. Any caregiver across the healthcare facility may access this database to view or enter required data instantly.
Electronic storage mitigates the risk of illegibility and errors in handwriting. Duplicate testing and screening may be avoided, thus saving both time and costs. By creating authorized access, data may remain secure yet available.
In addition, computerized medical records greatly enhance the quality of treatment as physicians can instantly access patient history and allergy lists, prescribe medication and, most importantly, focus on their predominant responsibility of providing treatment. Paperless medical records all but obliterate the need for them to perform time-consuming administrative chores.
Finally, the risks associated with going paperless may be reduced by developing clear organizational policies and establishing reporting systems.
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