EMR technology contributes to medical practice in four ways:
cost reduction, revenue enhancement, administrative efficiency, clinical efficiency.
4. Medical error reduction, disease management, lab result management
Four out of five physician office visits leave with at least one prescription representing approximately 3 billion prescriptions dispensed each year. The Institute for Safe Medicine Practices has estimated that pharmacists place more than 150 million calls to physicians asking for clarification. Forrester Research estimates the number of prescription-related telephone calls is 900 million with nearly 500 million calls made to the pharmacy for refill approvals alone.
More than 3 million of the 8.8 million adverse drug events that occur each year in ambulatory care are preventable and result from illegible handwriting, unclear abbreviations and doses, unclear telephone or verbal orders, and ambiguous orders.
EMR reduces
+ prescribing errors (ignorance about drug interactions, errors in writing the name or dose)
+ dispensing errors (prescription correctness, inaccurate dosage calculation)
+ administration errors (wrong patient, wrong dose or strength, wrong time or frequency)
EMR also helps management of
+ recalled medications
+ patient followup
+ electronic interface to download lab results |
