The EHR has long been a staple of quality medical care. Having consistent and reliable access to patient medical records has transformed the way providers are able to treat patients. Since their introduction though, EHR’s haven’t evolved in the same way that other technologies have. Penn Medicine is taking on the challenge of modernizing the EHR, making it streamlined and more interactive.
One of the problems with the EHR as it exists now, is that it can be viewed as the same static paper chart that doctors had in the past, just in digital form.
Currently, a good deal of data entry is relegated to the employees that can least afford to be spending time on it, doctors and nurses. These are the same employees that will then have to search through data to find the information they’re looking for. This means that this digital version of a patient’s file can actually require more time and effort to use and become more burdensome than even paper.
While not all EHR’s are built equally, Penn would still like to improve on the concept with one that is built from the ground up with key input from their own physicians. Ideas that have been floated include things like a real-time feed where doctors receive alerts regarding necessary actions for patients.
Innovations in the way that Penn has provided care also include ensuring that patient’s medical records will ensure that they’re recommended for appropriate follow-ups and prescriptions following an event like a heart attack while avoiding sending patient’s for unnecessary tests.
Extract doesn’t make EHRs, but we provide a solution that helps avoid the time consuming and error prone process of getting information from your outside incoming documents into a patient record. If you’d like to learn more about how we do this, please reach out today.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.