The following excerpt is from an article found on Health Data Management. It was written by Joseph Goedert. -------------------------------------- Physician practices that implement new electronic health records/practice management system should use them to target a short list of efficiency goals and clinical outcomes to gain the biggest initial impact from their investment, an expert in implementing these systems advises.

Shocking stories of major data breaches by computer criminals continue to appear in the news, with no end in sight. So many organizations fail to shore up their computer networks or apply the latest in security best practices that hackers from any location in the world with Internet access can penetrate their systems with relative ease.

To err is human, the saying goes, and no matter how careful your employees are at your medical organization, you can count on mistakes arising from time to time. The trick is in setting up procedures and protocols to make preventable mistakes as few as possible. Consider that an overworked staff trying to process too much information in a limited amount of time can grow frustrated, which can lead to even more mistakes.

Your medical organization does not revolve around general practice doctors. Yours is an outfit that focuses on one or more specialties. Just as you wouldn’t try to use a basic graphics program that came free on your computer to make a major work of art, you wouldn’t want to use generic electronic health records software that doesn’t account for the unique services you and your team offer.

The following excerpt is from an article found on HIT Consultant. It was written by Catalyze’s Travis Good who talks about why there’s more to EHR integration than the API. --------------------------- Last year digital health funding reached $5.8 billion, leaving no question that the potential is aplenty for ambitious health-tech innovators. Still, it takes more than seed funding to bear fruit in this market. While innovating in digital health may truly be something, integrating in digital health—well, that’s everything.

Your medical practice obviously relies on the timely paying of claims. In order to keep the lights on, you can’t afford to make mistakes or remain committed to an older way of doing things (submitting claims by paper instead of digitally). Sometimes a medical practice hasn’t switched over to modern software because no one in the organization has pointed out how many errors the team has been making lately, or the realized the number of delayed payments caused because a form wasn’t filled out properly.

We all want our medical practices to run as efficiently as possible. Countering human error with software solutions that eliminate repetition is a great way to get started with boosting efficiency. Currently, many medical organizations force employees to handwrite or type in pertinent patient data, and this is a time-consuming process that is subject to errors. In fact, if your workers are already feeling stressed out about entering data, their efforts to type faster may have the reverse effect of slowing them down because they have to correct mistakes so often.

The following excerpt is from an article found on www.ehrinpractice.com. It was written by Jeff Green. ---------------------------- A consequence of EHR products including more functionality has been the development of the market for EHR software integrations or add-ons that further enhance functionality. A software add-on is any third-party software program or script that is added to a program and enhances it by providing additional features and abilities. For example, Adobe Flash is a software add-on that gives Internet browsers the capability to watch flash movies or play flash games.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) information is used for various purposes. Whether data is used to compile a comprehensive medical history, to support clinical research or to facilitate diagnosing and treating patients, accuracy is critical. Handwritten chart notes are becoming less acceptable, although some physicians still prefer this method because it is familiar.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services describes (CMS) electronic prescribing as the “ability to electronically send an accurate, error-free and understandable prescription directly to a pharmacy from the point-of-care,” which is an integral component of improving quality of care.