Electronic Health Record
Electronic health record (EMR), not to be confused with
electronic medical record is a comprehensive electronic method of maintaining
the entire medical record of a patient.
In contrast, the electronic medical record is often simply medical
practice specific, and offers little to no portability of information. According to Medicare, there is now a
carrot/stick approach to entice MD’s and other practitioners to adopt such
software and it isn’t cheap. Software
can run 10’s of thousands of dollars on up, depending on scale of use. Medicare is currently offering incentives to
adopt approved software now rather than later.
If the practitioner waits until 2015 or later, he/she will face a 1% to
3% penalty per year. Also, “meaningful”
use must be proven to receive the incentives.
This usually happens in a doctor’s office by integrating prescriptions
that are automatically sent to the pharmacy.
The Idea is to be able to offer a one stop shop for a patient’s medical
record regarding imaging, pharmacy, doctor visits, rehab, etc…In theory, this
can drastically cut down on prescription errors, and duplication of effort
patients dread so often when seeing multiple doctors. The whole concept presents an opportunity
cost for the practice. Major Hospital
chains and big practices have more resources to adopt such change, but many
smaller “one doc shops” cannot afford to purchase, train, implement, and
maintain such an investment even with the incentives. Some smaller primary care practices are
simply not seeing Medicare patients all together. All in all, this brings up a valid point
regarding healthcare and associated costs, especially the imposed costs of
doing business.
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