Efficient Medical Data Entry At Times Critical to Patient Care

Efficient Medical Data Entry At Times Critical to Patient Care Electronic medical data entry is not a piece of cake for physicians but they need to master it since the patient experience is at stake.

Managed Outsource Solutions

Healthcare practices sometime have to consider medical data entry as an option as reports indicate that electronic health records are not being used by most physicians the way they should be. This is slowing them, reducing their performance and compromising on the care they provide.

Electronic Medical Data Entry still not Used Well EHR is supposed to provide multiple advantages to healthcare practices and hospitals in terms of lowered costs and better care coordination, which ultimately helps patients as well. However, physicians are still not unanimous in praising the system. Some are still struggling with the supposed complexities in electronic healthcare data entry. What is clear, and the Surescripts-commissioned Connected Care and the Patient Experience survey confirms this, is that EHR has not been used to its full potential. Close to 55% of the patients surveyed revealed that their histories are still incomplete or missing. Most patients did not find any developments in the electronic delivery of healthcare.

Physicians Don’t Know their Patients Other problems that the Sure scripts survey reported with EHR use are: 

61% of the patients claim that their physicians have no idea of the allergies they suffer from



Around 50% of them state that their doctors do not know their prescriptions, while



Around 40% of them believe their insurance and personal information is not on file at their doctor’s office.



40% of the surveyed patients also reported a good deal of difficulty in accessing their health records.



29% of the patients claimed that they need to share their medical and test information with each physician they met.

www.managedoutsource.com

800-670-2809

More Paperwork Procedures in Each Physician Visit It’s a clear indication that EHR medical data entry is probably not done the way it should be. The immense potential and purpose of the electronic health record is sadly not being realized. This has also caused the paperwork to be irritatingly excessive for patients, with more than half the respondents reporting that they had to sign paperwork and get their ID or health insurance card scanned in every visit. Close to 30% of the surveyed patients said they have had to fill out their medical or personal information during each visit. All this eats into the precious time available for a patient visit.

Surveyed patients claim to spend five minutes for filling out the paperwork and six minutes for sharing patient information on average. That takes around 11 minutes of the average 15 minutes available for an appointment. To reduce the drain of time from those precious few minutes, 49% of the surveyed patients reported arriving early for a physician appointment while 28% of them scheduled for extra time to be added to their appointment for handling the paperwork.

Technology Brightens Patient Perspective Physicians need to embrace technology better. Not only will this improve their efficiency and help them give more attention to patients, it will also favorably alter patients’ perspectives. Around 40% of the surveyed patients reported that they would more likely be recommending physicians using EHRs, while 36% revealed that they were less likely to change physicians if their current physician is using EHR. Technology use gives patients more confidence in their physicians. This was proved by the fact that nearly half the respondents felt they were more likely to communicate openly with physicians to whom they can send email or text messages to share their concerns.

Between two similarly skilled doctors, more than half the respondents claimed they would pick the one who enabled them to fill information online earlier rather than during the appointment. They would also prefer physicians who would schedule appointments and receive results of tests online, and electronically store medical records.

www.managedoutsource.com

800-670-2809

Need Improvement in Clinical Processes and Patient Scheduling These are alarming indications that advanced healthcare is not meeting patient expectations. Quality of care is low and the patient experience is agonizing. The Commonwealth Fund reports that patients feel doctors either do not listen to them or say things they do not understand. Failure to realize the full potential of EHRs and use them well can be pinned down as the primary reason.

Physicians and practices need to take proactive steps in adopting electronic healthcare records, and outsourced data entry could make EHRs efficient, complete and more useable. Administrative tasks and patient scheduling need to be significantly streamlined as well and allowing a reliable service provider to handle these would improve practice efficiency to a great extent.

www.managedoutsource.com

800-670-2809