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Strategies to Improve Electronic Health Record (EHR) Usability with EHR Optimization

Author: Rachelle Robinson
by Rachelle Robinson
Posted: Apr 17, 2022

Internally Electronic Health Record (EHR) optimization is a joint effort; connecting with their EHR vendors to get the ball rolling is a key first step for many practices. EHRs are critical and play a significant role in healthcare outcomes, billing, treatment workflow, and so on. As a result, if caregivers seek better healthcare outcomes, fewer medical billing problems, and so on, EHR optimization becomes even more critical.

Unfortunately, many providers fail to keep up with Electronic Health Record (EHR) optimization, resulting in a slew of problems and errors, incomprehensible interfaces, duplicate medical data, and overlays, all of which lead to patient confusion. All of this results in patient safety issues, preventable medical errors, billing and coding errors, or denied claims, all of which negatively impact. It is not enough to establish an EHR system; adequate training, tailoring it to the hospital's needs, maintaining proper governance, and utilizing creative technologies to enhance EHRs are all essential components.

Efforts to Improve EHR Optimization Keeping Electronic Health Records (EHRs) Up To Date

It's critical to keep EHRs up to date and error-free at all times. EHRs aren't kept up to date in many circumstances, resulting in duplicate medical records or overlays. These problems with EHRs result in incorrect patient identification, but they also result in patient safety incidents and deny claims. One method to avoid these problems is to precisely identify patients at all touch points while protecting patient data integrity.

Getting Feedback

One important point that most caregivers ignore is that feedback can lead to a slew of changes and optimizations. Being receptive to feedback, accepting it, and adopting it.

EHR Usability Priorities High-Quality Patient Care

Improve the ability of physicians to provide high-quality patient care. Patients and doctors should be able to communicate and engage effectively.

Encourage the Use of Team-Based Care

Clinical personnel must be able to conduct work as needed and to the degree that their licensure and privileges allow. Physicians must be able to dynamically allocate and delegate work to appropriate care team members as permitted by institutional policies.

Encourage the Coordination of Care

EHRs should be able to track referrals and consultations automatically and ensure that the referring physician can track the patient's progress and activities along the continuum of care.

Reduce the amount of cognitive work

Medical decision-making should be aided by EHRs that provide concise, context-sensitive, and real-time data free of irrelevant data. EHRs should control the flow of information and adapt to the context, environment, and user preferences.

Facilitate patient engagement using digital technologies

Whether it's for your health and well-being or the sake of the environment, interoperability chronic illness management between a patient's mobile device and their electronic health record will be a valuable asset.

Incorporate Post-Implementation Feedback

Incorporating end-user feedback is an important element in user-centered design into a product's design and enhancement EHR. This feedback should be made easier by technology.

Encourage Data Fluidity

Interoperability across multiple venues such as hospitals, ambulatory care facilities, laboratories, pharmacies, and post-acute and long-term care environments should be made possible by EHRs. That includes the ability to export data and appropriately integrate external data from other systems into the longitudinal patient record. The importance of data sharing and open architecture cannot be overstated.

Connection and Integration

The EHR should be designed to be integrated into the revenue cycle and practice workflow management. It should also be built so that messaging and e-prescribing capabilities are included, as both are advantageous to improving the quality and speed of care provided and the patients' outcomes. So, these are the parameters used to determine the effectiveness of EHRs in the healthcare industry. And now that you know what they are, you have a starting point for determining whether or not you need to optimize EHR right now.

Work with a Trustworthy EHR Provider

Working with a dependable Bellemdex Ehr provider who understands the touch points of the entire process and knows the tricks of the trade to make it all a lot more efficient in optimizing your current EHR solution or the beginning of its planning. Without the help of an EHR provider, you're likely to miss out on sections that need to be changed and parts that don't need to be touched right now. They will assist you in gaining a better understanding of what has to be done for the entire system to experience more value embedding. You now have all of the information you need to optimize your current EHR system.

Suggestions for Improving EHR Design

EHR developers must optimize their systems to allow for longitudinal care and care involving teams of doctors and patients who are managed over time.

  • Clinical documentation in EHR systems should assist doctors' cognitive processes while documenting.
  • EHRs must incorporate tags to identify the source of data when it is utilized after it has been created for the first time.
  • If the data contained in the patient record already substantiate the action, EHR systems should not require users to tick a box or otherwise confirm that an observation or action has been done.
  • EHR systems must allow for the integration of patient-generated data while also preserving the patient's identity.
Implement Assisting Features

Improving the usability of electronic health records and determining their right location in the overall health information system (health IT), the following points should be kept in mind:

  • Customer relationship management is the management of customer relationships.
  • To improve the patient experience, use digital strategy and technology.
  • Digital navigation offers a unique opportunity to stand out and make a statement.
  • Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) – especially the use of robotic process automation, virtual agents, or Chabot's to automate contact center operations, analyze clinical notes and procedure data, and predict missed charges in the revenue cycle.
  • Supply chain integration — to ensure that the proper clinical items are available at the time of care without carrying a multi-dimensional inventory to cover every eventuality.
  • Insights into economic and social needs - to support a patient's wellness and health, whether in acute, primary, community, home, or mobile care settings, working with a caregiver, or caring for oneself.

About the Author

MediFusion's extensive portfolio of services, robust EHR and medical records systems software continue monitoring and managing your practice.

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Author: Rachelle Robinson

Rachelle Robinson

Member since: Apr 12, 2022
Published articles: 3

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