EHRs decreasing the quality of care?
What? Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems store info about patients and are the hub from which clinicians operate. With such a system in place, the quality of care should naturally improve. And while EHRs are definitely a part of every clinician’s daily routine, the question is – have EHRs impacted the quality of care? The findings are split.
Earlier this month, Medscape released their poll results – physicians are split on the effectiveness of EHR on the quality of care. In this poll, 207 physicians were questioned, and 44% believe EHRs have diminished the quality of care, while 40% believe the opposite. This is not a good gap!
Dislikes:
Digging deeper, the physicians were split on these reasons of why EHRs are decreasing the quality of care:
- Added paperwork/charting
- Entering data during the patient encounter
- Lack of interoperability with other systems
- System failures or problems.
Likes:
- Locating and reviewing patient information more easily (59%),
- Electronically subscriptions (49%)
- Portability/access to patient records by all members of the care team (44%).
Desires:
- More user-friendly interface (44%)
- Greater interoperability and record sharing (30%)
So, what’s the answer to this vexing problem. Switching to a new EHR is certainly an option, yet doing so is difficult, time-consuming, and very costly … and the current issues may not disappear.
Clearly, there is no time like the present for hospital systems to embrace systems that can improve the performance of their current EHRs and increase physician satisfaction. ViTel Net’s cloud platform can solve most – if not, all – of the problems above.
Sounds incredible, right? Our experts work closely with both the IT and the medical teams to provide an experience that satisfies clinicians’ needs by providing desired workflows. With just a single sign-on, the staff has access to all patient data through the EHR and the ability to initiate a virtual visit through the EHR – true connectivity.
