Primary Care EHR Software Is All About Saving Staff Time and Improving EfficiencyBy Kashish Arora, Technical Content Writer at SelectHub
Are you wasting your time looking for patient information every day? Do you often find yourself occupied with a lot of paper-based patient records? While these are essential to any health care organization, seeing yourself swamped with files can be overwhelming. Since primary care EHRs provide immense support in going digital, these systems can help you store and review patient files electronically.
Executive Summary
- Manual data entries require a lot of physical storage space. Enable electronic documentation modules to provide health care professionals with ease in record keeping.
- The best way to avoid risky, error-prone and unethical bills, prescriptions and lab reports is to use digital modules to keep everything up to date and complete.
- Patient portals provide seamless communication between doctors and patients through instant messaging, document sharing and revision capabilities.
What This Guide Covers: What Is Primary Care EHR Software?
Overflowing cabinets and unorganized spreadsheets can be hard to deal with in an office space. Whether you run a small business or a significant health care enterprise, streamlining daily tasks and delivering excellent care quality through higher staff efficiency can help take your company to the next level. Since primary care EHRs boost business productivity, working with multiple patients in a single day will never be worrisome.
Primary Benefits
While making a new application purchase, there’s a lot that you need to consider to invest your money in the right tool.
Take a look at the following benefits to understand how this software buying will lead you to an advantageous position:
Save Space
Paper-based health records are difficult to keep. Since they grow week after week, finding an extra storage facility for these becomes a necessary task for health care organizations. Using digital tools such as documentation, patient portals and e-prescribing not only enables businesses to function with better efficiency but also eliminates expenses pertaining to stationery supplies, file-keeping, storage rent and dividers.
Reduce Transcription Staff
Many large health care organizations hire multiple employees to assist admin staff with transcription and filing tasks. This employment requirement not only depletes revenue but also creates communication gaps between patients and physicians, leading to miscommunication, documentation errors and many other similar problems.
With virtual tools, businesses can create a balanced work environment that offers higher accuracy and increased productivity.
Enhance Prescription Procedure
Digital prescribing tools enable physicians to communicate directly with pharmacies, eliminating illegible handwriting errors, incorrect information and incomplete documents.
E-prescribing modules allow patients to view their medication histories and ask for refills using electronic patient portals. According to a recent study, 93% of clinicians agreed that online patient portals have improved communication among staff, pharmacies, lab technicians and patients.
Enabling patients to track prescriptions, view medication information and request refills through patient portals helps reduce errors and improve patient retention.
Improve Analytics
Reviewing business analytics once a month enables clinicians and health care organizations to improve revenue, productivity and treatment delivery. Since analytics reports and dashboards aid in reducing staff burden and streamlining day-to-day clinical processes, enabling it to acquire better data analysis of patient records and staff performance can help make your business operations effective.
Key Features & Functionality
| Medical Billing | With medical billing tools, businesses do not only save time but also ensure high accuracy levels with automated data entries. Streamline revenue cycles and enable faster payments to deliver high-quality care since financial soundness is equally vital as patient health in the medical industry. |
| Documentation | Use electronic documentation tools to automate data entries to ensure accurate patient information is available around the clock. |
| Patient Portal | Patient portals make information sharing quick by enabling an online platform for patients to access clinical reports, treatment notes and prescriptions directly from anywhere. |
| E-Prescribing | E-Prescribing enables physicians to gain insights into a patient’s entire medication history at a click of a button and send new medications to pharmacies for fulfillment. Set system alerts to inform prescribers of potential drug interactions and medication allergies. |
| Patient Scheduling | Since patient scheduling works exceptionally well in providing them with an online patient scheduling module, it gives them the freedom to book without ringing up people they do not know. |
| Customizable Dashboards
| Monitor the quality of daily operations through user-friendly dashboards that track treatment progress to enhance care delivery and customer satisfaction rates. View health records, treatment notes, financial rankings, client charts, performance metrics and staff attendance graphs in a single window with up-to-date information and accurate comparisons. |
Software Comparison Strategy
Choosing a new application requires a substantial amount of time and money. Since each buying process demands you to take systematic steps towards your goals, finding the right pathway is essential before you plan to invest.
And while there are plenty of essential steps you have to take on this journey, you cannot afford to miss assessing your company requirements at the beginning of your procedure to make data-driven decisions.
Once you understand your company's gaps well, the next step is to compare the shortlisted products with one another to narrow your choices and pick the best tool with ease and seamlessness.
According to a recent survey, 20% of physicians in the U.S. have already been using EHRs for between 10 and 14 years now.
Take a look at the following points to ascertain the right way of performing software comparison:
- Conduct a team meeting to identify the most significant challenges you are facing in the company. Since each department will have a different set of problems to discuss, throwing light on every aspect is crucial for making the best decision.
- Talk to your colleagues to check if they have dealt with similar problems in the past. Once you can find something that looks quite similar to what you are facing currently, go deeper to ascertain how they have managed to bridge those gaps.
- Decide on your must-have features, customizations and integrations in a new application. Since each business has unique requirements, talking to software vendors about your needs in detail is mandatory to finalize your decision in the most brilliant way possible.
- Consider the various support and training options to make your final choice. Since new applications can work better when you learn them properly, do not put new systems into use without knowing the best method to utilize them. Connect with vendors to check if demo, trial and training options are available.
Cost & Pricing Considerations
Making a product purchase means working with the application and its vendors for a long time. And while users never face problems with companies that have all the details on display from the beginning, the ones that disclose them slowly with time can be problematic.
Since various issues such as maintenance charges and paid upgrades lead to frustrated and unhappy customers, look into cost considerations in advance to avoid being on the list.
Peruse the following cost and pricing considerations to ascertain the right way of venturing into the product purchase process:
- Since budgeting is one of the most crucial aspects of any purchasing decision, upon beginning to plan its structure, do not forget to consider the main factors that dominate the development of your spending capacity. Remember, what you choose between cloud-based vs. on-premise EHR systems primarily decides your budget limit.
- You'll never find a single application fulfilling all your business requirements. For this reason, finding the one that's extremely close to what you want is the ideal way of going ahead. Ensure you check all details related to installation, implementation and regular updates, so you do not have to incur any unknown financial losses.
- Even if the vendor you speak with gives you every information about the product, things could still turn out hidden or mysterious in later stages. Hence, an in-depth research analysis is fundamental to keeping yourself in a protected and safer zone.
- Some application owners also like to demand extra money for bug and error fixing. And while it is a great thing to look into, given that such services work for your benefit, you may not necessarily want to involve yourself in the process as the company may end up charging you extra for these facilities.
Questions To Ask
Once you narrow it down to only a handful of vendors, going ahead will be easy with only a few companies to get in touch with. Since one-on-one conversations help you understand the application and vendors in a detailed manner, do not avoid this step in the future.
However, while it is imperative to hold conversations with vendors, answering some questions internally is equally crucial. Take a look at the following points to gauge what you have to answer yourself:
- How much money can I assign to this activity?
- What am I trying to achieve through this purchase?
- How many employees will make use of the new application?
- How can I make the best use of this system?
- How will it help achieve company goals?
Upon getting answers to the questions you asked yourself internally, the next step is to contact vendors to check which out of the entire lot can give you the maximum number of benefits. Read ahead to know about the questions you should ask software vendors:
- How many modules work perfectly well?
- How active is your customer support team?
- Do you charge extra for installation?
- Is the application scalable?
- How often do you launch software updates?
In Conclusion
Constantly re-evaluating your options can digress you from achieving your goal. Instead of wasting time understanding what others are using, make your list of requirements to determine which features you require in your purchase.
Comparing various EHR vendors isn’t a cakewalk. Use our comparison matrix to assess your options swiftly.
Now that you have a fair idea of what you should have in the system, finding an ideal primary care EHR will be easy.
