Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Results Are In: The Doctors Have Spoken

Last month, Software Advice posted the results for their survey aimed at doctors and health care providers regarding their feelings about the benefits of EMR software.  The questions asked providers (who have already implemented EMR) whether or not their EMR helps them record and retrieve more accurate and legible patient information, if it benefited operations financially and the effect on office workflow.

Rating was based on a scale of 1-5: 1 meaning "I Highly Disagree" or "I Have Not Experienced This Benefit" and 5 being "I Highly Agree" or "I Have Experienced This Benefit".  The survey results demonstrated that the most commonly used EMR programs in use are Allscripts, eClinicalWorks, GE Centricity, Greenway PrimeSUITE and NextGen.

The questions revealed that most providers agreed that their EMR allowed them greater accessibility of charts and improved the coordination of treatment between multiple providers.  On questions regarding reduction of transcription costs, improving office communication and reduction of paperwork, only slightly more than half were in strong agreement of seeing a benefit after implementation.  However, a slight majority of providers disagreed when asked if their EMR improved their clinical decision making process or reduced medical errors and improved medical safety.

While it's very encouraging to see that EMR implementation is improving the quality of patient information, it's equally frightening that many still feel that it does not prevent medical errors from occurring - one of the main reasons for going electronic.  Thankfully, EMR technology is still in its infancy and proves to be performing relatively well at such an early stage of development.  Perhaps Software Advice should run the same survey again next year - I'm curious to see how different the results might be.

Click here to see the rest of the survey results and doctors' comments.

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