Healthcare organizations can hire medical transcription services to document medical records and minimize the burden of EMR documentation on physicians.
Integrating Medical Transcription and EHR to Improve Doctors’ Productivity
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Integrating Medical Transcription and
EHR to Improve Doctors’ Productivity
Healthcare organizations can hire medical transcription services to document
medical records and minimize the burden of EMR documentation on physicians.
Electronic Health Records (EHR) or EMR has completely changed the way physicians
treat their patients and it was estimated that with the introduction of EHR, medical
transcription services will come to an end. But with the EHR system, physicians are
forced to spend their quality time on their computers capturing patients’ medical
information rather than focusing on the patients. Physicians also tend to miss out on
opportunities to engage with patients when using the EHR. EMR Happy Hours or hour-
long monthly sessions organized by a team at the University of Missouri Health System
where healthcare professionals shared best EMR practices with their peers helped
improve physician efficacy and efficiency in maintaining the EMRs.
The two main challenges of EMR training are that the most easily adopted EMR
innovations and features must be communicated effectively to existing users, and
secondly time pressures result in inertia with regard to workflows and habits of existing
users.
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Margaret A. Day, MD, MSPH, and Jeffrey L. Belden, MD, professors of family and
community medicine at the University of Missouri Health System, say that the EMR
Happy Hour healthcare professionals discuss how they minimize their documentation
burden and then reorganize the EMR of other participants. In one of their sessions, they
created a Google document comprising most frequently used text expansion phrases.
This was with a view to copy the information, change it as needed, and ensure it was
easily accessible.
The outcome of this process is that the participants, clinicians and EMR facilitators etc
learn something new during these sessions. The surveyed participants also stated that
they valued peer support in particular, feeling less isolated while learning alongside
others who share their plight.
Belden explained other benefits of EMR happy hours that the healthcare professionals
felt that one tip learned saves 20 minutes a day for the rest of a record-keeping career.
They have discovered issues such as misconfigurations and bugs. These must be
repaired by the IT department. When physicians use software settings that are not right,
that also leads to challenges. Beiden added that sometimes they have a Happy Hour
agenda, which they drop to address the needs that are brought to their attention. Since
they allow this flexibility and support the attendees, helps immensely in avoiding
burnout systems.
Today many healthcare organizations hire medical transcription services to document
medical records to minimize the burden of EMR documentation on physicians. The
physician can dictate the patient’s data in a recording device and the digital device will
capture all the information clearly. These audio files are encrypted and sent to trained
medical transcriptionists who transcribe these audio files into accurate clinical
documentation which are integrated into the EHR. The main advantage of this combined
approach is that it satisfies the government requirement of implementing EHR and also
ensures error-free and accurate clinical documents. It helps physicians to interact more
with their patients and focus on giving better quality service.