Electronic Billing Pros And Cons

The EHR system does make things flow a lot easier. Better equipment seems to be of good service as well. It gives better service to the patient. Being able to communicate throughout the office without actually having to be face to face with that person is very helpful, seeing you may not always know exactly where that person is at that moment.

Electronic filing also cuts down on the space needed tremendously, they no longer need a huge room to store all patients files. It is also faster to find, update, and send electronic files. Last but not least, societal outcomes include being better able to conduct research and achieving improved population health. Although it seems there could be nothing wrong with EMR, there are potential disadvantages associated with this technology. These include financial issues, changes in workflow, temporary loss of productivity associated with EHR adoption, privacy and security concerns, as well as access.

Health Information Technology has increased efficiency; medical breakthroughs have increased life expectancy, cures, and improved preventive care. Benefits of EMR’s are the opportunities for improving health care efficiency, safety, health benefits and net savings, reducing hospital lengths of stay, nurse’s administrative time drug usage in hospitals and drug and radiology usage in the outpatient setting (Takvorian,2007). EMR’s will assist with research and quality improvement leading to rapid advancement in personalized medicine. It helps patients become more involved in their care (Takvorian, 2007).

How Information System’s Assist: The facility states that it offers their physicians and patients access to the “latest high-tech imaging services, digital medical technology and specialized equipment.” This equipment includes the use of digital radiology imaging, digital echocardiograms and digital cardiac catheterization. The facility also uses an Electronic Medical Record system, which they claim enhances patient safety and maximizes physician connectivity. Having this equipment helps the facility differentiate itself from its

One question that faces every medical practice, hospital and urgent care center is whether to continue in-house billing or outsource their billing. Needless to say, there are pros and cons to each of these billing methods. However, there are several benefits to outsourced medical billing that are frequently overlooked.

An eMAR implementation is important for Meaningful use. Will you be working with an EHR system that is cloud based? Hunter (2011) explains that patient safety at the point of medication administration is significantly increased with the use of eMARs. The warnings, alerts, and parameter checks that are in place will facilitate a safer medication administration. Nurses will be reminded to check heart rate, lab results, and pain scales, ultimately helping the nurse to administer medications in a safer manner. The use of an eMAR will also improve medication administration by keeping an accurate schedule for administration by flagging medication that is due as well as prevent medications from being administered to patients that have allergies

Administrative expenses have been seen through time not spent finding, filing, and retrieving patient charts. A reduction in employee time equals less money spent by the employer. Budget savings a seen through elimination of transcription, transferring, and transporting of patient charts. Billing components within EMR packages can provide cost savings through generation of direct billing and reimbursement; this process shows great potential for reduction in billing errors. Errors made during the billing/reimbursement process result in dollars lost or not recovered for the organization, which in turn drives up the cost of healthcare. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported (in 2003) that a 10% error rate, regarding payments,

Hospital based physicians are not eligible individually, the hospital as a whole is considered based on criteria. An incentive payment for an individual provider is based on the practice. Eligible hospitals and professionals can receive EHR incentive payments totaling $2 million or more. The incentive payment through Medicare is $44,000 and through Medicaid is $63,750 per clinician to implement use of electronic health records for these patients (HealthIT.gov, 2015). The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs also include three stages with increasing requirements for participation (HealthIT.gov, 2015). All providers begin participating by meeting the Stage 1 requirements for a 90-day period in their first year of meaningful use and a full year in their second year of meaningful use (HealthIT.gov, 2015). After meeting the Stage 1 requirements, providers will then have to meet Stage 2 requirements for two full years (HealthIT.gov, 2015). CMS has recently published a proposed rule for Stage 3 of meaningful use which focuses on the advanced use of EHR technology to promote health information exchange and improved outcomes for patients (HealthIT.gov,

Electronic medical records can benefit patients in many ways. One major way it can benefit a patient is the efficiency of the records being organized and easy for any practitioner or staff member to read. EMR can lower the risks of

Having an electronic health record (EHR) certification, eClinicalWorks ensures that the providers have the necessary means to make the most out of the system while meeting their objectives. Since most hospitals must abide by the ICD-10 codes, which is an international classification of

Besides the disadvantages of (EMR)’s the advantages pose great benefits to patient care and efficiency. The greater use of electronic medical records or health records can reduce wait times, of seeing doctors or waiting for test results. All staff would need to cohesively work out the technical challenges and software data. With sophisticated IT

The EMR system is better for some doctors because it eliminates the unclear handwriting, thus cutting down on the unclear writing mistakes by doctors. The patients have been released from the hospital at a rate of at least one day earlier than the patients with paper records and these bills were almost $900.00 less than when they used the paper records. There have been many deaths each year because of the wrong medication being written on the prescription paperwork and a pharmacist misread the handwriting on the form. If this information is typed the chances of making a mistake are less. There are also EMR systems that diagnose diseases and treatments, which is another advantage. Just imagine how fast the patient can be healed if a computer program can predict the results of an illness by entering the symptoms such as a device that searches for glaucoma via computer generated images, the analyzing of mammograms and the ultrasound device to analyze lumps in a females breast that determine if it is benign or cancerous. Most of the time these computer systems have accuracy rate of 80% or more which is the last advantages that we will talk about today.

The government believe this will be a better method of safety. As stated by AmedsNews.com: “Patients believe physicians' use of electronic medical records can help improve the quality of care they receive. And if a physician offers patient access to the EMR, they feel confident the doctor will protect the privacy of their health information.”(Dolan, 2012) Sometimes medical staff forgets to put away the items in central record and someone may intercept with the patients charts, but on the hand the privacy can be compromised. Malicious people are being to hack into computer systems and stealing patient information. Computer technology may not be the greatest thing for world always.

I believe that having Americans’ health records on paper have many limitations which can be corrected by using an EMR system. There are definitely some pros and cons of having an EMR system but I do believe the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. As a nation, we are all trying to move towards a more unified health care system. Having all medical records under an EMR system would help us more towards this goal. Here are the advantages and also some disadvantages of using an EMR system in a health facility.

Another big plus of the EHRs is that studies have shown that it has helped providers improve accuracy of diagnoses and health outcomes (Couch, 2008). For example, nurses could have reliable access to patients complete health information and have pictures which would help with whatever problem they might encounter. EHR doesn’t just keep patients medications and allergies, it also check for problems whenever a new medication is prescribed and it also alerts the nurse of potential problems (Couch, 2008). EHRs can also tell the nurse if potential safety problems occur, which helps them avoid more serious consequences for patients, which can lead to better outcomes. The EHRs can also help nurses quickly identify and correct operational problems, which compared to the paper-based setting, those kinds of problems would be more difficult to correct. It can also help