EMR is the abbreviated form for “Electronic Medical Records”.
EMR systems are used by doctors and hospitals to electronically store and
manage patients' medical histories. In the medical industry, patients' records
are sacred documents. Medical records contain a patient's entire medical
history and information crucial to future care. Government regulations (HIPAA
compliance etc.) require that these records be handled with the utmost
confidentiality. In order to manage the thousands upon thousands of patient,
insurance company, and HMO records; doctors and hospitals are beginning to
rely more on sophisticated electronic medical records systems.
Many questions remain about EMR, for example: What does EMR
do? Why is it so expensive? Why is there a lot of disparity in pricing? Why do
we have to pay for continued maintenance and upgrades etc? What will happen to
medical transcription? It is not our intent to answer all the questions here,
but to indicate our knowledge of and ability to interface with the various
systems available today.
We will remain cognizant of the market; and are researching
the possibility of carrying one or more systems in the future; that would of
course, interface with or be an integral part of our current solutions.
Electronic medical records (EMR), is a very fast growing
field in the healthcare industry. There are a lot of products out there and
very hard for physicians to make a decision on the right one. We believe that
no system is an overall solution. Every medical facility is different as is
every practice. Some EMR systems cost close to a million dollars and some are
modular in nature and can start at only a few thousand. The difference is in
the features, scalability, upgrades, compatibility, portability of
information, communication to other EMR, support, and so on. EMR systems that
manage just patient records and help in billing or handle most of a practice
is often called Electronic Practice Management (EPM).
A practice goes through many different processes that help in
managing the practice. Some are mentioned below.
1. Patient enrollment (Demographics, Insurance
Information and so on)
2. Scheduling (Requires front desk involvement, can be
automated for reconfirmation of appointments)
3. Insurance verification
4. Insurance authorization
5. Patient visit (also creating the medical records;
this can be by an interactive touch screen computer or using voice recognition
software or electronically dictated that is then sent electronically to a
transcriptionist who creates the document and sends it back electronically to
the system)
6. Prescriptions
7. Physician Orders
8. Referrals
9. Re-scheduling (Requires front desk involvement, can
be automated for reconfirmation of appointments)
10. Coding (sometimes done automatically by the system
or can remain manual)
11. Billing (Requires people involvement)
12. Collections (Can
be done only with involvement of specialized collectors)
These are the most important
functions in a medical office. Each of these functions can be broken down
further into several processes; all requiring manpower and time. This is where
an EMR has its value. OSI is presently working very hard to identify the right
EMR for our clients. Please check back to see which one we choose and why. Or
contact us to speak to our specialists on our progress.
