Advantages & Disadvantages to Using the EMR

EMR, or Electronic Medical Records, are electronically stored medical information using specialized software intended to increase your quality of care when you go to the doctor. Your doctor can access your entire medical history, past test results, medicines that have been prescribed and notes about prior health concerns as well as prescriptions from his office directly to your medicine distributor.

Quality

• The first advantage of EMRs is the increase to the quality of medical care you receive. Your doctor can access his own prior notes about your case, review your current condition with prior concerns and track your medical condition from visit to visit. EMRs also reduce the chance that you will be prescribed conflicting or dangerous medicine combinations. If you are in an emergency situation outside of your hometown, your doctor can send your entire medical history to the doctor treating you in seconds. Additionally, dangerous medical trends, such as high blood pressure, weight gain or cholesterol levels can be tracked and viewed in clear graphs that you can look at with your doctor, allowing her to analyze the improvement or decline of these issues.

Medical Audits

• Another advantage of EMRs is their clear presentation during medical audits. Your doctor has all of the information from their practice stored in a single location; this information can be reviewed by auditors quickly and without the hassle of working through piles of physical medical folders. This change drastically reduces the time that auditors must spend reviewing patient files.

Training

• One disadvantage of using EMRs is that they require training in order to be used effectively and a period of adjustment while your doctor and his staff get used to the software. This required training affects every department, especially including nurses and billing department staff. While software designers work hard to make the interface user-friendly, a lack of training could lead to a loss of files or the misuse of the software.

Conversion

• Another disadvantage of EMRs involve the conversion from physical medical folders to the ERMs software. An established physician with experience may have thousands of medical folders located in their office, and to get the most out of the software, they must input all of that stored information into their system. This conversion is time-consuming and extremely demanding of your doctor's medical staff, who are responsible for the data entry of those old files. Errors are possible during this phase, particularly when the responsibility of data entry includes the interpretation of anyone's handwriting.