Over the last four years, huge changes have come to the healthcare industry. The most significant change that I have personally witnessed is the gradual implementation of Electronic Medical Records in private practices and hospital systems. Both of my parents have been greatly affected by EMR — my mother, a physician, switched from dictation and paper records and my father had to reassess his company’s core competence as a medical transcription service. Unfortunately, the transition towards electronic medical records has been much too gradual of a process. In order to truly assist medical professionals with keeping digital records, EMR software needs to be altered to receive the proper data inputs and be consistent across all platforms.
Issue #1: Software Needs to be Position Specific
EMR software should be catered to the needs of every medical specialist. When the software is difficult to navigate or has too many irrelevant entry fields, data tends to be entered incorrectly or simply scanned to file as it’s a much quicker option. EMR software needs to continue to be tweaked until there are versions that suit every different type of physician. This way, a ophthalmologist won’t need to be checking boxes about their patient’s dental health or about any previously broken bones. Having the most relevant software versions for each position will help ensure that physicians take time to keep proper digital records instead of continuing to use paper or dictation. If the software is consistent for all physicians of the same specialty, medical professionals can start learning how to utilize this software as early as when entering a residency program.
Issue #2: Truly Eliminate Paperwork
While doctors are transitioning towards paperless records, patients are still given loads of paperwork at each visit. This information is given to medical assistants to later enter into the digital record and relay to the physician. If offices had a computer kiosk, smartphone, or tablet check-in system, patients could input their medical information and the doctor could then immediately pull up that information on their laptop (no need to have that extra step anymore to try and interpret people’s handwriting and then type it).
Issue #3: Cohesion Across Hospital Systems
There are many EMR softwares currently out in the market. While it provides a great transition towards having digital records, having different softwares in use across hospital systems causes many problems when it comes to accurate storage of information. With multiple softwares, it’s difficult for hospital management to hire experienced IT staff who are knowledgeable about their specific EMR system. There’s also the issue of security and being able to manage access to records across these platforms given the fact that so much cross-communication is necessary in emergency medical situations. Because different private practices and hospital systems use different EMR software, it becomes more difficult and time consuming to transfer records. This might only cause a delay of a couple hours and thus the unnecessary duplication of a test, but medically speaking it’s our health at stake and those few hours saved by having a universal platform might actually make a critical difference.
