Turning
Healthcare Over to Computers: The Risks of Rapid Adoption of
EMR and Speech Rec Technology
Free Info on our recommended Medical Transcription Program leading to an exciting home based medical transcription career
Healthcare documentation has come a long way. A continuous stream
of technological advancement and automation has generated significant
gains in efficiency while increasing the quality of care through
improved access to vital patient information. The future looks
bright indeed, as incremental improvements in technology promise
to confer additional benefits. Many health care providers are
embracing new versions of technology as quickly as they are
rolled out in the hope of delivering heightened levels of patient
care at a lower cost.
Nowhere are the advances in technology felt more keenly than
in the healthcare documentation arena. For many years, medical
records departments have been viewed as cost centers and subordinated
to other seemingly more important areas of the healthcare
organization. As a consequence, healthcare documentation has
historically received neither the glamour nor the funding
that other front office and patient care activities have enjoyed.
Over the past few decades, however, the balance of power has
begun to shift. Healthcare documentation is now rightly seen
as one of the keys to profitability and a catalyst for industry
growth.
New talent and resources are beginning to flow into this
area breathing new life and vitality into what was once an
afterthought in most healthcare organizations. Leading the
charge is a new breed of profit minded executives set on transforming
the healthcare model. As the industry ushers in a new era
of efficiency and profitability, decision making executives
would do well to remain aware of some of the significant risks
of an overly ambitious technology adoption timeline. For instance:
Underdocumentation
The risk of underdocumentation has the potential of increasing
dramatically with new electronic medical record (EMR) protocols.
That EMR technology promises to exponentially increase efficiency
in some aspects of care - primarily by decreasing administrative
workload and increasing the speed of information flow - is
not in dispute.
However, it should be recognized that the rapid adoption
of this technology in its current form has the potential to
create down- stream issues with patient care as a result of
improper or inadequate documentation. EMR threatens to increase
costs as inadequately documented assessments and activities
are reworked. Patient care may also be compromised as diagnoses
are delayed due to lack of complete information flow.
Underexamination
EMR's may steer physicians to point and click their way through
a few standard procedures, potentially ignoring less obvious,
non-charted options.
Undervaluing the traditional role of the physician
As technology asserts itself with fits and starts into the
patient care process, there is a real risk that the transition
from physician directed outcomes to technology driven outcomes
will be too abrupt, again compromising patient care. Additionally,
recent studies suggest that the physicians spend about 9 times
longer entering an equivalent amount of information via EMR
and EHR than with traditional dictation based narratives.
Time is money, and physician resources are far too costly
to be assigning tasks better handled by non-physician professionals.
Chronic under reporting
Pushing physicians in a direction of drastically less documentation
when the trend has been toward greater documentation of patient
care for the past several decades is at best imprudent and
at worst reckless. While some efficiency in healthcare documentation
may be good and necessary, it is simply unrealistic to expect
a physician to render what has historically been a multi-page
detailed medical record document with a few clicks of a mouse.
Undervaluing the role of the medical transcriptionist and
medical record technician in the records process
Speech recognition has made some significant strides in recent
years and now plays in increasingly prominent role in the
healthcare documentation process. However, it has still not
proven to be as effective as a seasoned transcriptionist in
rendering a dependable output - particularly when it comes
to some of the more complex documentation tasks. There are
simply too many variables that require human intervention
to achieve consistently accurate and completely automated
documentation with today's technology. While it seems clear
that the role of the traditional medical transcriptionist
will be forever transformed by new advances in technology,
there will likely always be a role, and I trust, an increasingly
important role, for the professional medical records technician.
Conclusion
As technology continues its steady march, there is no doubt
that it will continue to encroach on traditional methodologies
and bring a new and important measure of efficiency and profitability
to the healthcare industry - benefiting patients and practitioners
alike. Those organizations that are careful and thoughtful
in their implementation strategies will tend to have smoother
transitions and will likely manage their risk more successfully
than their more zealous counterparts.
Free Info on our recommended Medical Transcription Program leading to an exciting home based medical transcription career
|