Electronic health record (EHRs) are critical for keeping patients involved in your healthcare practice. According to one study, EMRs have improved both patient care and physicians’ income with proficient Revenue cycle management. Almost all patients prefer to communicate with their independent doctors via email. But how can physicians keep patients engaged with EHR ?Before we get into the details, let’s first define patient engagement and its role.
What Exactly Is Patient Engagement?
Patient engagement is one key strategy used by healthcare providers to promote informed decision-making and behaviors. “Patient engagement” has been widely demonstrated to reduce costs and improve patient outcomes.
On the other hand, “consumer engagement” is another term for patient engagement. Companies, banks, and other service providers engage their customers by providing information, tips, and other forms of communication. Marketers’ long-term goals have been to engage customers, provide better experiences, and strengthen brand relationships, all of which lead to improved results. This strategy is neither innovative nor revolutionary, as it is recommended in most marketing textbooks.
The healthcare industry is finally catching up and realizing that in order to grow and succeed in a competitive marketplace, patients require more access, quality, information, and accountability.
The Patient Portal Will Incentive Your Patients To Participate In Your EHR!
Most best Electronic Health Records software include an online portal through which patients can access their medical records at any time. Patient portals enable patients to access not only their medical history, but also to better manage their healthcare by:
- Making appointments
- Online medical bill payment
- Contacting their doctor by email or text message
- Receiving health alerts
- Obtaining a prescription refill
- Using a keyword search to find health topics
- Preparing intake forms for appointments
Patients can accomplish two things by allowing them to complete these tasks through a patient portal:
- To begin, patients can reorder their medications and make appointments more convenient. As a result, they are more likely to stick to their treatment plan and achieve better health outcomes.
- Second, if patients can access their tasks and treatment plan online in one place, they are more likely to use the portal. Patients can easily message their doctor instead of waiting for an appointment.
Having patients access the portal gives you a great opportunity. Patients are more likely to view their medical documents if they are already on the screen. You can also post notifications or announcements on their account to encourage them to look at their records or recent results.
With the advent of the digital age, the healthcare industry has a significant opportunity to improve patient engagement and empower patients to take charge of their own care. When you use EHR software, you will notice an improvement in patient care.
Improving Patient Engagement
Patients and providers can collaborate on informed decisions when they have access to electronic health information. When it comes to chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, and obesity, patient participation is critical. Here are some ideas for getting your patients involved with electronic health records (EHRs) and how it will benefit your organization:
- With the help of EHR, you can provide detailed and accurate health information to your patients. In addition to clinical summaries, you can send patients reminders for follow-up care after a hospital stay or appointment, as well as links to additional educational resources.
- EHR allow you to schedule appointments and send emails electronically. If your organization can communicate quickly with its patients, it will be able to identify symptoms sooner, reach out to patients more proactively, and improve healthcare quality.
- Electronic health records will make it easier for your organization to collect and use patient data. Using patient lists, your organization can identify and engage at-risk patients in a proactive manner.
Overall, the use of EHRs can encourage patient engagement.
What Are The Benefits Of Patient Participation?
Patients who take an active role in their health have better health outcomes, according to research. The following are some of the significant advantages of increased patient engagement:
- By sharing information, software such as EMR/EHR programs can improve workflow.
- This reduces or eliminates paperwork, ensures accurate information, and provides better service to patients. Because of technological advancements, physicians and patients can communicate more frequently and keep each other informed about their condition.
- Patients are more confident in their conditions and diagnoses after increasing communication and receiving more health information.
- Scientists may be able to identify trends that lead to improved public health outcomes with improved health information systems.
How Does EHR Help Patients?
Decision-making support tools found in clinical technology systems such as EMRs keep patients safer by improving the accuracy of clinical decisions. EHRs excel at “facilitating safer, more reliable prescribing.” This is critical in a healthcare paradigm where medical errors are the third leading cause of death. Patients, on the other hand, stated that one of the most significant advantages of EHR technology is the ability to access their healthcare information online.
According to studies, patients like the convenience of logging in to access test results, order medication, and make appointments. Take note, physicians seeking to avoid MACRA penalties: the same study found that the benefits of EMR adoption helped with patient satisfaction scores:
- 78% of those polled said they were satisfied with their doctors.
- Patient surveys drop to 68% for practices that do not provide services through an integrated EHR platform.
As payers begin to tie patient satisfaction to reimbursement, these surveys clearly, demonstrate the benefits of EHRs from both the patient and physician perspectives.
1. Getting rid of unnecessary and redundant paperwork
Today’s time-pressed patients do not want to duplicate the same data across forms. One advantage of EHR is the elimination of the need to enter the same information multiple times.
2. Simple accessibility to online patient portals
Online patient portals enable appointment scheduling and retrieval of test results from any location with a digital signal. This information is also easily accessible.
3. Greater control over personal health data
PHI can be easily transmitted between providers without the need for hand-copying files and transporting records to and from each specialist visit. The advantages of integrated EHR allow data to flow seamlessly between providers.
4. Conserve time
Patients can save time while improving the speed and accuracy of test results, as well as have access to real-time scheduling.
5. More precise billing
EHRs have the potential to improve the accuracy and efficiency of medical billing. Data can travel faster between their insurance company and the physician.
6. Elimination of unnecessary testing
When doctors lack access to prior data, they frequently repeat testing, which is a huge waste of time and money. This is especially important if the test is invasive and will cause the patient unnecessary discomfort.
7. More rapid prescribing
The time spent calling in an RX has been completely eliminated by e-prescribing. While patients appreciate the ease of communication between their doctor’s office and the pharmacy, they are unaware that electronic prescriptions have the potential to save lives. A physician is said to have the worst handwriting in the world, according to an old joke. However, scratchy penmanship has resulted in prescription errors between the provider and the pharmacist. This potential risk can be eliminated with an EHR.
The Main Takeaway(EHR)
Electronic health records (EHRs) are a critical communication tool for engaging patients and improving their health by providing access to and education about their medical records. As a result, patients are more involved in their own care. Although face-to-face meetings are still effective and necessary for healthcare providers, technological options that allow for electronic engagement have proven to be critical for keeping patients engaged.
Patients must shuffle through copies of paper charting and wait on hold while waiting for appointments in practices that do not have an EHR. Instead, the benefit of an EMR provides these patients with constant access to the digital landscape through user-friendly digital portals. Patients praise the ease of use and accessibility of tools such as online scheduling and office communication.For more information about healthcare and patients read updated blogs.
