Why EHR/EMR? Electronic Health Records or Electronic Medical Records is the collection of electronic records of health-related information on an individual, which is created and gathered cumulatively across more than one health care organization.  It is managed, consulted and shared by licensed clinicians and staff involved in the individual’s health and care.

In daily operations, EHR improves the quality of service health centers provide their clients by streamlining charting practices, electronically adding information to searchable database records that prevent the potential hazards of handwritten paper files, improving patient safety, and alerting providers to critical information, in real time.

The EHR decisions are taken by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT).  The Certification Commission is an independent, nonprofit organization with the mission of accelerating the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs or EMRs). By certifying products on the market, CCHIT will make sure it will be “interoperable” (able to connect up and receive or send patient data where you need it), and to protect the privacy of your patient records.

Here are some steps that will help physicians with EHR purchase decisions — and that is the core purpose of this website. We would like to help you better determine your own readiness for moving to electronic health records, get started on the selection process, and be wiser in the actual purchase and contract negotiations.   After taking a decision and investing into one EHR or EMR, the actual installation and implementation will become crucial factors in your success.  Finally, there will be advice on how you derive the full potential benefits from your EHR, from, both, a business and clinical standpoint.

We know your top challenge is having time to even think about EHRs. That is why a good understanding and comparison between different EHRs/EMRs is very important.

Some of the criteria for determining which solutions will be approved for stimulus funding, can be summarized as follows:

• Organizing patient data – demographics, clinical documentation and notes, medical history;
• Compiling lists – problems, medication, allergies, adverse reactions;
• Receiving information – test results, consents, authorizations, clinical documents from outside the practice;
• Creating orders – ordering medication or diagnostic tests; managing order sets, orders, referrals; generating and recording patient-specific instructions;
• Supporting decisions – presenting alerts and reminders for disease management, preventive services, wellness; checking for drug interactions and guiding appropriate responses; supporting standard care plans, guidelines and protocols; updating decision support guidelines;
• Authorized sharing – managing practitioner/patient relations, enforcing confidentiality, enabling concurrent use among multiple practitioners and healthcare personnel;
• Managing workflow – assigning and routing clinical tasks, managing the taking of medication and immunizations, communicating with a pharmacy.