EHR and EMR, what are they?
Electronic Health Records (EHR) is a form of digital documentation with information specific to a particular patient. In most cases, EHRs may be shared by means of healthcare information technology within a specific network. However, efforts have taken place to share across information systems of other providers. EHR applications bring allow the previous “paper and pen” style chart-taking into the current time being more interactive, convenient, and ensuring a more streamlined administrative workflow in a health related work area.
There are several EHR applications such as the VA’s VistA CPRS, DoD’s AHLTA, Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect, Practice Fusion, and Allscripts Professional. These applications all share the same general purpose and include an array of information including patient demographics (including body mass index: height, weight, age), vitals, problem list, medication and allergies, lab test results (for example EKGs), radiology images (linkage to PACs images), and billing information. In some instances, scanned paper documents are included in the record as well. These applications also provide benefits to the healthcare organization as a whole, the provider, and to the patient. Benefits include yielding fewer medical errors, more effective treatments, lower costs, and increased patient satisfaction.
There are several EHR applications such as the VA’s VistA CPRS, DoD’s AHLTA, Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect, Practice Fusion, and Allscripts Professional. These applications all share the same general purpose and include an array of information including patient demographics (including body mass index: height, weight, age), vitals, problem list, medication and allergies, lab test results (for example EKGs), radiology images (linkage to PACs images), and billing information. In some instances, scanned paper documents are included in the record as well. These applications also provide benefits to the healthcare organization as a whole, the provider, and to the patient. Benefits include yielding fewer medical errors, more effective treatments, lower costs, and increased patient satisfaction.
Value
The several benefits of the applications show the supreme value of EHRs. Although being an upfront, initial investment, the true value is seen over the long run with the significant returns and advantages these applications provide. “Cut costs and increased care” is what EHR implementation and health-information exchanges (HIE) are all about. In such today's fast-paced society, the necessity for fast and accurate information exchange is at it’s highest demand. HIE of EHR amongst providers provides a smoother flow of patient information and saves time. HIE links different institutions together often seen in the referral process. If a patient needs to see a specialist, for example, so that their information is accessible with the click of a button versus hand-transport or having large components of their health record locked away in multiple different institutions. Dr. John Mattison gave an example of this in an interview from EHRtv: “We had one patient who hadn't been seen with us for a couple of years but had been seen recently at the VA. The physician at Kaiser Permanente requested the record from the VA hospital and in a matter of seconds, had a complete and current list of problems, medications and allergies. This particular patient had actually had two life threatening allergic reactions to a common anti-hypertensive medication and to a common cholesterol lowering medication both of which are in a family of medications where it would be quite easy for someone to have prescribed him another member of that class of drugs; precipitated perhaps even a worse life threatening allergic reaction after being sensitized with the first one. Yet in a matter of seconds, we had that information right in front of us. Turns out when he was seen, both his blood pressure and his cholesterol were not in control and we would have been inclined to have given him one of those medications but we had the information right in front of us. He had neglected to mention that he had two new allergies since he had last been seen. The only source of that information that we had was through this information exchange. We have many other similar examples of the profound clinical and safety benefits of sharing the information between institutions, with the patient's permission, that have directly and clearly benefited the care of the individual patients.”