Electronic Patient Records

Electronic Medical charting is a computer system that helps manage many patient records. Systems are considered to be an Electronic Medical charting system when it integrates information from different sources and captures data at the point of care.

Many health care professionals use electronic medical charting, to save time and money. In most cases an Electronic Medical charting system will integrate with the offices billing software, allowing the provider to see the patients check in/out, submit information to the billing software, assist the provider in decision making through treatment and recommendations and even help generate reports.

Today there are over 300 electronic medical charting programs. It can be hard to navigate the market and many are designed just for certain specialties and different size clinics. It is equally important to know about the available federal programs for purchasing an electronic charting system. Some providers will be eligible for over  $40,000 in incentive payments received over a five year period, from Medicare and Medicaid premiums.

You could consider healthcare Pay-for-Performance programs also. These programs offer performance-based bonus payments to doctors that use an electronic medical charting system to improve quality of patient care. To be eligible, doctors need to track and monitor how they are delivering quality patient care and document the patient’s experiences.

 

 As doctor’s offices evaluate the use of an electronic medical charting system, they need to also considering the replacement of their existing charting systems. Instead of using two separate systems. Physicians need to consider using complete systems that integrate electronic medical charting into a single database. This will help in reducing the IT costs of maintaining several systems.

 

Electronic medical charting software is usually delivered as either an on-premise or web-based hosted system. The main differences between the two options, include how users would access the system and how the system is priced. Web based systems are usually paid for on an ongoing monthly basis and cost less upfront, On-premise electronic medical charting systems usually cost more upfront but have little or no ongoing costs.

 

Patient care and security of sensitive patient records is a concern for all health care providers. Finding the system the meets both your practice needs and the need of your patients is very important. You can find valuable information on the different types of electronic medical charting systems from many different sources. Be sure to get the best system possible at the right price.