EMR Implementation & HITECH Act Blog

Medical Offices and Recordkeeping: Updating the HITECH Way

Some medical offices still have file rooms that resemble libraries:  row after row of file cabinets with brightly colored letters and numbers on file folder edges.  Sometimes they look more like primary-colored artwork than a functional business system!   Evolution is slow but inevitable.  Remember when typewriters were the norm in most business offices and virtually all records were kept in manila files?  Not a lot has radically changed — until recently.  The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is now fast-forwarding implementation of electronic medical record (EMR) technology in US medical offices and facilities.  Continue reading after video.

The mountains of paperwork that still exist in many medical offices are a sign of the lag in implementing available technology.  Patient safety issues alone should be enough to drive timely adoption of technology and tools! Handwritten patient notes and prescriptions are regularly found to be illegible.  Physically-handled records can be misfiled, lost, or shuffled.  Just ask the Minnesota woman who lost both breasts because her tissue sample results were sitting in the same tray as another patient’s – she wasn’t the patient who had cancer at all!

The NY Times reported this year that the amount of paperwork required simply to re-enroll in government-sponsored health insurance/Medicaid programs is so huge that more than a third of eligible individuals failed to submit on time. This sort of thing isn’t limited to the US either. A recent Italian study at a major hospital found that nearly one-quarter of prescriptions were illegible and additional 30% were incomplete. That’s just an accident waiting to happen! How does your medical office stack up?

With the right systems deployed in your medical office, you’ll see benefits immediately.  Not only will you realize increased recordkeeping accuracy and efficiency, you’ll also save a tree or two!  PC Healthstop will be your partner in the design and implementation of that technology solution.  Contact us about your current needs and let us help you seamlessly implement the systems necessary to meet tomorrow’s HITECH Act eligibility requirements.

Brian DeRoy
PC Healthstop Blogging Team

Posted by PC Healthstop Blogging Team