Medical Malpractice

There are many Electronic Health Record (EHR) solutions available on the market today. Some are built and priced for large group practices, and others are more modest. All of the viable EHR offerings must comply with standards that the government has set for "certified" EHRs that meet meaningful use criteria and offer the capability to produce required quality measures reports.

At its core, an EHR is used to document information collected during a patient visit and make that information available for future visits. How a visit is documented becomes important because the EHR also will "code" the visit for billing automatically. The EHR process of coding takes a detailed look at what was documented and applies optimized billing codes, thereby generally improving the amount billed for services.

The HITECH section of ARRA provides new incentives for your practice to implement an electronic health record (EHR). Formed in 2000, the Leapfrog Group has for years been advocating improvements in patient safety for acute care through the use of Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE), Evidence-based hospital referrals, and NQF Safe Practices. In recent years, Leapfrog's focus has expanded to include safety in ambulatory practice as well through advocacy of EHRs, electronic prescription checking, and disease and wellness management programs. So, you've been considering an EHR. Or perhaps you haven't. This is why you should:

ARRA: ARRA provides up to $44K in incentive payments to a physician to implement and meaningfully use an EHR

Improve Reimbursement: Having an EHR usually drives billable care up because most physicians tend to under-code visits

Improve Patient Care and service: With an EHR, you have the capability to participate in pay for performance programs and maintain useful knowledge about your patient populations. An EHR facilitates electronic review of patient's medical history in a single, easy-to-find location. Lost charts can also be eliminated as well as pulling charts for patient calls, visits, diagnostics or prescription/refill requests. An EHR can provide automated notification of required tests, exams, or follow-ups for patient care. It can also free up more time for your staff to do outreach to specific groups of patients, i.e. diabetics. An EHR can potentially reduce medical errors while improving your office's communication with other physicians. You can have access from home to the chart when the ER calls you at 2am. Lab results can be automatically be added to the chart through the use of interfaces. Critical or alert values can automatically be flagged and brought to your immediate attention.

Cost Savings: An EHR facilitates self-service patient portals, thereby reducing front and back office costs. An EHR can also eliminate the costs of filing charts, and chart transcription. An EHR facilitates more space in the office as paper chart filing areas are reduced and provides the potential for improved supporting documentation in the event of malpractice claims.

In the end, it's more a question of when you'll implement an EHR rather than if. Even if the ARRA incentives are not enough to sway you, you have to ask yourself whether you'll be able to deliver the same quality of care and service as other practices that have an EHR?