One of the big concerns about implementing an electronic health record (EHR) into a medical practice is the fear that it will slow you down. In fact, after cost, usability (and its effect on productivity) is the second-biggest perceived barrier to EHR adoption.Numerous studies have shown that EHR implementation actually ends up saving cost in a group practice, mainly because of reducing or eliminating the need for ...
Robert Rowley, MD
The difference between an ambulatory and hospital EHR
What difference is there between an inpatient EHR and an ambulatory EHR?The difference is quite significant, actually. Let’s start by looking a little deeper into hospital IT issues, and the evolution of tools that try to address them.The hospital EHR environment Traditionally, from an IT perspective, a hospital is not really a single system – it is a collection of systems in various departments.Over the past few decades, each ...
Can ACOs curb health costs and improve quality of care?
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have received considerable attention recently, and are the new "hot topic" in healthcare delivery policy circles. They are the latest response to the need to do something to stem the runaway inflation of healthcare costs, while maintaining or improving measurable health care quality.According to a ...
EHR implementation in the ambulatory or hospital setting
Adoption of electronic health records (EHR) systems remains a challenge, both for hospitals as well as for physicians in ambulatory practice. The process of adoption, implementation, and meaningful use of EHRs (let us keep in mind) is actually quite different between those two setting.Much has been written concerning EHR adoption within hospitals. Much of the experience in computerized physician order entry (CPOE) comes from hospital EHR adoption, and many of ...
Electronic health records (EHR) to improve medication compliance
A recent report in the Annals of Internal Medicine on the characteristics of prescriptions that are abandoned at the pharmacy raise the question of (1) how to ensure that people actually pick up their prescriptions, and (2) how to make sure that people actually take the medications that are prescribed.What role does modern Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology play in this question?A study by the non-profit ...
