Benefits of Electronic Health Record Systems

Benefits of EHRs

Electronic health records (EHRs) improve healthcare quality and provide benefits to patients, clinicians and healthcare spending. EHRs benefit patients by assisting clinicians to provide better patient care and increasing patient participation. It also enhances care coordination and diagnostic and patient outcomes. In this way, EHRs do not only benefit patients, but practitioners as well. Practitioners see this improvement through the enhancement of communication, improving patient data management, and assisting in the decision support process. (The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology [ONC], n.d.-d)

 

 

EHR Benefits for Patients

EHRs improve patient care by: 

• Providing accurate and up-to-date patient information
• Assisting providers to reduce medical error and to support decision support for  precise diagnosis which promotes better outcome
• Enhance the privacy and security of patient data
• Providing convenience through a-prescription that automatically sent to a pharmacy
• Encouraging patient participation through a patient portal (ONC, n.d.-b; ONC, n.d.-d)

EHR Benefits for Practitioners

EHRs assist clinicians by:

• Enhancing decision support, clinical alerts, reminders, and medical information
• Improving productivity and work-life balance
• Increasing efficiency to meet their business goals
• Providing more reliable prescribing
• Promoting accurate documentation, coding, and billing (ONC, n.d.-a)

 

Cost Benefit of EHRs

EHRs improve medical practice efficiency and healthcare expenditures, and allow for better healthcare management through:

• Reduce transcription costs, chart pull, storage and re-filling costs
• Offer automated coding capabilities and documentation
• Prevent expenses resulted from medical error through error prevention alerts and precise patient data 
• Enhance management by offering integrated systems such as scheduling, progress notes, billing, and management claims
• Improve communication between clinicians, labs, and other staff (ONC, n.d.-c)

Optional Resource

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)

Forum Activity

After reading the benefits of EHRs, share your experience with EHRs and comment on two other peers’ forum posts. If you have experience with EHRs as a patient, please share your experience, such as:

• Benefits that you noticed
• Difference between the paper-based and electronic medical records
  
• Suggestions for improvement of or wishes for future EHR systems

Through this forum activity, the learners will have the opportunity to make learning more personal and relevant. While sharing their experience, learners may come up with questions and answers, which helps solidify the knowledge.