EMR – Do Patients get Heard?

One of the biggest concerns that most patients have is that their physicians do not give them enough time. While many people tend to ignore such complaints, health IT consultants consider it to be one of the many reasons behind the dire conditions within the healthcare system today. Fortunately, besides improving care quality, the advent of EMR has also addressed the problem of poor patient engagement. The rationale is quite simple; physicians once busy in manually documenting encounters now have the option of doing just by making a few clicks. The latest point and click technology allows them to select an option and the EMR constructs an entire sentence for them.

Although it is true that patients are worried about the quality of care being delivered to them, they also want physicians to engage them in a better manner – eliminating the ever existing patient-physician communication gap. Before electronic medical records were introduced, physicians spent most of their time documenting patient encounters and diagnostic details rather than engaging them. It is true that physicians require sufficient time to help patients recover from their ailment through a specific treatment pathway. Nevertheless, one cannot refute the fact that if patients felt disconnected with their physicians; this would end up breaking the healthcare continuum.

“Patient engagement has always been a major concern for us and fortunately health IT provides a solution to the problem too. With limited time and knowing that we have a long list of patients to entertain, engaging patients in a more appropriate manner has been a laborious task, but thankfully EMRs have made it easier for us to do that”, says a North Carolina based physician.

Although physicians have been the sole beneficiaries of Electronic Medical Records, one of the advantages that the technology has brought to the patients is that they get a considerable amount of time to be heard. While patients understand that curative procedures take time, being properly educated on their problems and developing a profound understanding helps them recover soon.

Making a transition from conventional paper based practice techniques to a completely automated system was an arduous job for physicians. However, EMR technology brought with it tons of advantages that the healthcare industry is currently experiencing and is also likely to experience in the near future – helping physicians adopt the technology at a faster pace. Without a doubt, besides helping physicians streamline their clinical workflow management, EMRs have also helped them save a lot of valuable time which they can use in better patient engagement.