New Proof that EMRs Bring Benefits

Hospitals that have implemented advanced electronic medical records (EMRs) enjoy a broad range of benefits when it comes to quality of care and operational efficiency, according to a new report—and it’s not a stretch to think the same is true for physicians who implement EMRs.

The February 2012 report from the HIMSS Analytics and The Advisory Board is based on the first survey to produce results from hospitals that have achieved Stage 6 or Stage 7 on HIMSS Analytics’ EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM), offering insight about the benefits that can accrue for those medical practices further along the development track.

Almost 80 percent of the respondents reported multiple benefits, the most common of which were adverse drug effect reduction (73 percent) and improvements in other patient safety indicators (58 percent). There were also a number of operational and administrative benefits, including reduction in order turnaround times (76 percent), decreased cost of paper forms (67 percent), improved charge capture (64 percent), decreased transcription costs (61 percent), improved documentation quality (55 percent), and improved coding quality (46 percent).

The conclusion: EMR implementation can have a significant change on the quality of your practice, especially as you reach later stages of development.

If you haven’t purchased your EMR yet, consider gloStream’s flagship EMR, gloEMR 6.0. Built on the Microsoft® Office platform, it’s one of the easiest-to-use EMRs on the market, and it can help your practice achieve any of the quality and efficiency benefits mentioned above.

An overview of the report is available here. Download the entire report here. Lean more about gloEMR here.