A patient portal is not the door that people walk through to get inside your medical practice. It is the term given to the electronic portal that you can enable for them thanks to your electronic health record software. Essentially, it is a way for patients to log into their account to check on details of their healthcare and to ask questions of the staff, with information protected by robust security.

When you run an orthopedic practice, your staff will have different processes and needs to address as compared to other specialties as well as family doctors. For example, you likely will have more referral patients, coming from emergency rooms, pain clinics, and general doctors, with the need to share information with these various entities to keep them updated on the progress of the patients.

For the uninitiated, when someone in the medical community mentions “EHR,” he or she is talking about electronic health records. An EHR is a vital application that is becoming nearly indispensable in most medical organizations, including those that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients and want to receive financial rewards from the government in exchange for demonstrating meaningful use of certified, up-to-date EHR technology because of the efficiencies it enables.

Doesn’t it seem faintly ridiculous that patients have to jump through hoops to get access to information that, since it is in digital format, would be so readily available to them? Today’s patients are quite accustomed to being able to access data on demand, from whatever location on Earth, as long as they have Internet access and a mobile device or laptop computer.

Work in your medical practice can become so intense, with nearly every spare minute already scheduled for important, pending tasks, that it can sometimes be difficult to see that there are labor-saving options that you simply haven’t yet been able to budget time and resources to investigate.

It almost goes without saying that the needs of pain management practices are quite different from those of other specialties. Addressing the needs of patients coping with acutely painful situations and managing patients’ chronic pain properly while meeting law enforcement requirements can spell the difference between a relatively speedy recovery or prolonged care that may include complications.

The following is an excerpt from an article originally published on Healthcare Dive. It was written by Meg Bryant. While there is still plenty of room for improving the usability of electronic health records (EHRs) and making them more affordable for care providers, experts are trying to get folks to focus on their future potential. The barriers to EHR implementation and interoperability are slowly coming down and once they do, vendors will start looking to add more functionalities to the systems.

Medical practices both large and small are coming to see the benefits of deploying electronic health record software at their facilities. Making the transition from an old-fashioned, paper-based system for tracking patients’ charts to EHR software is not something to take lightly. But the longer you delay the inevitable computerization of your practice, the longer it will take to get your employees trained and up to speed with using the new system.

Implementing customized radiology EMR software modified to fit your practice can transform productivity and efficiency to improve both workflow and patient experiences. Paper-based systems have pain points that frustrate staff members and create bottlenecks that slow down collaboration and delay patient treatment. Making digital information available directly from an EHR patient chart encourages collaboration and informed-consultations in real-time, without waiting for printed records and films – or CDs – to be delivered via mail or courier.

Electronic Medical Records are quickly becoming a must-have for any modern medical practice. More and more practices are finding that using the software allows them to spend less time tracking down patient information, and more time engaging their patients and growing their practice. Furthermore, this software greatly reduces data entry mistakes, and makes it easier to keep track of important patient and medical billing data.