Good Practice Guidelines for General Practice Electronic Patient Records

Electronic patient records, also called electronic medical records (EMR) or electronic health records (EHR) are the future for the general practice. The government offers $19 billion in incentives to adopt electronic medical records, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Medicare and Medicaid physicians using EMRs are eligible for a payment of up to $18,000 initially. Physicians who fail to adopt EMRs by 2015 risk a reduction in their Medicare fee schedule. Most practices can make the conversion work for them if they follow a few basic good practice guidelines.

Benefits

• A report by the Mayo Clinic notes that EMRs allow multiple professionals to share information instantly; allows for partner and supervisor oversight of treatment, thereby preventing mistakes; and are more efficient and cost-effective. Discuss within your practice the best way to work together to achieve these benefits for your practice and your patients.

Risks

• The greatest risk is compromising patient confidentiality. This can happen when an innocent person makes a mistake, when a person in the practice intentionally violates confidentiality, or when an outsider intentionally gains confidential information for personal or business profit. Continuous education and training reduces staff mistakes, and careful screening, good security and choosing the best technology reduces deliberate violation of confidentiality.

Conversion

• At the American Medical Association's annual House of Delegates meeting, speakers encouraged colleagues to scan all of their paper records into electronic files, and after confirming files were complete, destroy paper records. Maintaining both reduces the efficiency and also increases the chance of a breach of confidentiality.

Best Technology

• Much of the conversion of medical records to electronic form will be done by special health information technology vendors, who sell a number of products designed to scan and manage patient records. At the American Medical Association conference, experts recommended that physicians give the vendor a complete picture of the typical patient and ask exactly how any product will benefit that patient.