Electronic health records, or EHRs, are electronic medical records that focus on the overall health of a patient to create a more inclusive view of that patient’s care. EHRs are meant to be shared with other health care providers outside of one’s primary care provider and contain information about all of the clinicians involved in the patient’s care. This information moves with the patient in question at all times and is designed to be accessed by everyone – including the patient.
EHR software offers several benefits to both clinicians and patients, including:
- Emergency clinicians can immediately gather information about a patient’s life-threatening allergy if the patient is unconscious and can’t give the clinician that information themselves.
- Patients can find the motivation to continue to take their medications and stay on the road to improvement to improve the statistics of their medical tests.
- Lab results appear immediately in EHR records, so a specialist does not need to perform duplicate tests to get the information that they need.
- Notes from the patient’s hospital stay can inform discharge instructions as well as follow-up care, allowing the patient to move from one care setting to another smoothly.
Mental Health EHR software enhances the patient experience in a hospital or doctor’s office that uses it because the programs boost the productivity of the practice and put the patients under less stress. Intake and clinical documentation time decreases because EHR systems make it easier for a practice to keep everything in a well-organized, searchable software. Everything a patient needs can be found in a clinic’s EHRs such as their vitals or any prescriptions or labs that they may need. Physicians can also easily digitally refill a prescription through the service so that a patient does not need to come into the office at all if they need more medication.
