An electronic medical record (EMR) is a computerized medical
record created in a physician’s office or hospital. It is an electronic version
of paper based medical records that have been serving customers till now.
However, with the advancement of information technology, the industries across
different verticals are making the best use of automation to improve the
quality, productivity and ROI of their business. Healthcare industry being not
an exception to the rule, has started realizing the importance of automation
and particularly EMR.
Though EMR is a new buzz word in the healthcare industry, a
question often disturbs patients – is EMR only for doctors? As far as the adoption of EMR in a physician’s clinic or
hospital is concerned patients are often disturbed as regards the benefits of
implementing the system. A large no. of patients have a feeling that the system
would only benefit doctors, would interfere with security issues, would result
into appointment and treatment delays.
According to health IT experts, it would be absolutely wrong
to say that EMR is meant only for doctors. In fact, EMR has to benefit both
doctors as well as patients. The implementation of the system has to benefit
doctors as well as hospitals with improved work flow, increased productivity
and ROI. As far as patients are concerned the whole exercise of implementing
the system is based on the ultimate goal of providing better medical care to
the patients. The focus of the software product is on making life easier for
patients with improved work flow and quality of care.
If we carefully analyze meaningful use criteria, which being
introduced by US government for availing various incentives for implementing
EMR, the ultimate goal of achieving meaningful is to bring about significant
improvement in the quality of patient care. So it is the patients who are
ultimately going to be benefited from EMR implementation, hence it wouldn’t be
right to say that “EMR is only for doctors”?
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