Electronic Health Records (EHR) have completely changed the way physicians treat their patients and many believed that with the introduction of EHR, medical transcription outsourcing companies would become obsolete. But with the EHR system, physicians are forced to spend their quality time on computers capturing patients’ medical information rather than focusing on patients. Physicians also tend to miss out on opportunities to engage with patients while using the EHR. According to a study by Northwestern University, physicians spend one-third of their time in their exam rooms looking at computer screens. Physicians are a vital element in a healthcare setup and documenting medical records is a time-consuming and distracting task. The ideal way to resolve this is to outsource medical transcription to reliable medical transcription providers.
The EHR system provides a structured data methodology that allows physicians to check boxes and click buttons to denote what was done. But the structured data cannot be changed and the physicians have to choose from the list of given data. This may work for some patients, but not for all. Almost all EHRs allow physicians to copy and paste data but this can cause note bloat that results in junk data. Junk data is not reliable and becomes unmanageable.
According to the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity, accurate and high integrity documentation requires collaboration between physicians and the organization’s documentation scheme or transcription services. Only then can accurate, error-free and consistent medical records be ensured.
For efficient working in the healthcare organization, it is important to ascertain that the medical records accurate and clean. Following are some tips that will ensure accurate medical records.
- Minimize physician’s administrative burdens: Physicians and surgeons treat patients and document records according to the strict policies of EHR. But the duty of the physician is to focus on patients and not on documenting records. This will improve the efficiency and performance of the doctor and therefore only the task of approving the entries should be given to the doctors.
- Strike a balance between structured and unstructured EHR data: In the EHR system there should be a balance between structured and unstructured data.
- Eliminate interface barriers: EHRs need a good interface to communicate effectively. However, the fee charges for interface often discourage providers from using transcription services.
- Assign the task of document editing to transcription experts: Assign expert transcriptionists to manage the task of documenting medical records. This will help doctors to focus more on treating patients.
Today, many healthcare organizations hire medical transcription outsourcing companies to document medical records. There is no denying the fact that EHRs are going to stay. At the same time, medical transcription experts and documentation specialists are also in high demand, and this will continue to grow. With the right combination of technology and human intelligence and insight, physicians can be relieved of their EHR data entry burden and focus more on their patients.
To learn more about EHR we have written a new blog “New Study Recognizes Importance of Medical Transcription Support for EHR Clinical Documentation” on September 25, 2017
