newsprompt.coELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS
As the industry evolves, more urgent cares are evaluating their current electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management (PM) software solutions to make sure their practice is competitive and their processes are efficient. What worked 10 years ago needs a second look as the industry moves forward.
While urgent cares continue to be focused on efficient workflow, choosing the right partners can also have a big effect on your success.
The wrong EMR can end up costing clinics time and money and frustration. Most practices admit to not fully considering their clinic’s needs when analyzing which EMR/PM to choose and, not surprisingly, the inability to meet practice needs is one of the most common reasons many urgent cares are looking for a new solution. In addition, shakeups in the industry based on compliance issues and business model evolution have many on-demand healthcare providers considering a switch.
You undoubtedly have a running list of what’s important when choosing an EMR/PM not only software features, but also how well your goals align with the provider you choose. The following list of must-haves, based on years of helping urgent cares find their best solution, includes both software and service priorities that you need to consider. In the next five years, revenue for the healthcare industry is forecast to grow at an annualised rate of 2.4%, to $28.1 billion, driven by the overcapacity of primary care offices and the relative cost and time savings of urgent care centres. Our extensive and intuitive urgent care EHR and practice management software solutions are tailored to your facility workflow to meet your primary care needs, streamlining communication and access to information. They are built from the ground up for mobile medicine and optimised for any platform.
The electronic medical record (EMR)/electronic health record (EHR) is becoming an integral component of many primary-care outpatient practices. Before implementing an EMR/EHR system, primary-care practices should have an understanding of the potential benefits and limitations. The perception is that the EMR/EHR will reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of healthcare provided.1 5 6 However, studies exploring the impact on care, which included both specialty and primary care, have found that the EMR/EHR has had mixed success at decreasing costs and improving the quality of ambulatory care services.7–10 Reviews that have explored the value of different components of the EMR/EHR have also found only marginal benefits. There is modest evidence that computerized physician order entry (CPOE) decreases prescribing errors.11 However, it appears that it is mostly minor errors that are decreased, and CPOE may actually increase duplicate orders and result in failures to discontinue medications. A review of electronic reminder systems found only a small improvement in adherence to processes of care, with a trend toward larger improvements when clinicians were required to enter a response. A review of electronic strategies to improve dosage selection when prescribing found some improved clinical outcomes, such as a decrease in rates of toxic drug levels and a decrease in hospital length of stay.13
Before implementing an EMR/EHR system, primary care practices should have an understanding of the potential benefits and limitations such systems may have on their practice. To help address this, we sought to systematically review the recent literature around the impact of the EMR/EHR within primary care outpatient practices. We chose to focus on studies examining the effectiveness or benefits of the EMR/EHR broadly, and considering the impact on healthcare structure, process, and outcomes.
Health care organisations at various levels are transitioning into the new electronic era by implementing and adopting electronic health record systems. New job roles will be needed for this transition, and some current job roles will inevitably become obsolete due to the change. In addition to training new personnel to fill these new roles, the focus should also be on equipping the current health care workforce with knowledge and skills in health information technology and health informatics that will support their work and improve quality of care.
Urgent care is now need of every health services providing hospitals or research institute, in certain cases patients need immediate attention and that is why urgent care units are now functional. There are some professionals also who are specialized in urgent care and called front line of medicine service. Urgent care is not a substitute for emergency care. In general, an emergency condition is one that can permanently impair or endanger the life of an individual. If necessar transfer patients directly to a hospital emergency room for further treatment.
Urgent care centres are open beyond typical office hours, and their scope of services is broader than that of many primary care offices. While these characteristics are similar to hospital emergency departments, such centres employ significant numbers of family physicians. The payer distribution is similar to that of primary care, and physicians’ average salaries are comparable to those for family physicians overall. Urgent care centres report early adoption of electronic health records, though our findings are qualified by a lack of strictly comparable data. While their hours and scope of services reflect some characteristics of emergency departments, urgent care centres are in many ways similar to family medicine practices. As the health care system evolves to cope with expanding demands in the face of limited resources, it is unclear how patients with episodic care needs will be treated, and what role urgent care centres will play in their care.
