By Mitchell Gavillion, guest blogger
Healthcare providers in the U.S. are looking for ways to wring value out of every dollar spent, and technology factors prominently into their working strategy. Currently, consumers and insurance providers spend about $1.7 trillion annually in the U.S. on healthcare, and it’s cost is only expected to rise.
One particular technology holds the promise of significant cost savings throughout the healthcare system. An electronic health record is a collection of information about a patient that includes information about routine and acute healthcare, prescriptions, treatments, test results and other documentation.
The Electronic Health Records (EHR) is portable, meaning that it can be viewed by and used among many different healthcare providers, including primary care physicians, emergency room personnel, nurses, allied health providers, dentists, pharmacists and others involved in the delivery of healthcare to an individual or group. Experts estimate that the widespread use of EHRs may save Medicare about $23 billion annually. Collectively, consumers could save more than $30 billion annually in out-of-pocket medical expenses when EHRs are in use.
As part of the HITECH Act of 2009, healthcare providers that participate in Medicare and Medicaid can receive maximized incentive payments that exceed $60,000 beginning in 2011 if they use a technology referred to as EHR. The incentive payments decline each year until 2016. For providers who do not use EHR’s, Medicare will begin assessing a penalty of 1% beginning in 2015 and increasing to 3% over a period of three years.
The major benefits of implementing EHRs are three-fold, and indicate how the technology can produce such significant cost savings. EHR systems can allow a physician to enter medication orders directly into a computer, and send the e-prescription to the hospital pharmacy, or to the patient’s community pharmacy. Direct order entry for prescription medications, diagnostic tests and treatments can save money and time, by flagging medication errors, potential prescription conflicts, drug allergies, and redundant or unnecessary medical tests and treatments. Such a system can also reveal unhealthy patient access patterns such as “doctor-shopping”, which can be an indicator of covert prescription drug abuse or undiagnosed/unrecognized healthcare-oriented psychological issues.
In addition to direct order entry, EHRs facilitate the exchange of vital medical history. This can be invaluable to providers who do not regularly treat the patient, or those providers who offer care on an emergency basis. It can also provide important information to healthcare providers when the patient is incapacitated or otherwise unable to communicate.
Finally, the widespread use of EHR’s can help hospitals and healthcare providers monitor and manage the quality of healthcare delivery on an ongoing basis. By using EHRs as a data collection tool, providers can identify weaknesses in their healthcare delivery system and address problems that may otherwise be missed. By improving the quality of healthcare delivery, providers can reduce the cost of providing high-quality care and risks to patients and themselves. They can also eliminate less effective treatments and reduce the need to remediate problems caused by low-quality treatments or treatments prescribed in error.
The migration to electronic health records among healthcare providers has many students focusing on health information technology degrees.
Mitchell Gavillion is a freelance writer who covers various industries including education, health and fitness. Mitchell is passionate about learning and believes education is one of the things that keeps people moving forward in life.