I ask because I work for a private clinic where space to hold paper records has become an issue. I am looking at the possibility of using electronic records instead but I want to ascertain if this will also benefit the patients? Has anyone else here completed this and if so how long did it take and what was the impact, including positives and negatives?
Um, only if you want them used against your or your patient for ransom. Unless your clinic has encryption and a firewall that even the NSA can't break, I think you are just setting yourself up as a target. Typically they gain access via a unsuspecting admin. This is an under-reported crime, probably costing millions per year.
Good luck.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cybersecurity-hospitals-idUSKCN0HJ21I20140924
http://khn.org/news/rise-of-indentity-theft/
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/ransomware-why-hospitals-are-the-perfect-targets/
As stated by Kirk Flippo,
Security of your patients' identities is a huge concern. The benefits of using an EHR for the patient are easy to see: 1) uniformity in reports from your office, 2) easily transferred to specialists, hospitals, and other GPs, 3) easy to read reports not hand-written by doctors with poor penmanship.
The drawbacks on security could be mitigated (not removed) with additional security systems including active monitoring by a security firm, additional firewalls, anti-malware and spyware, as well as vigilance on the part of your staff.
As for the time and expense, both can be considerable, depending on the size of your practice. As someone who has been looking into this for the future of my career, I have done a little investigating on the subject over the years.
Let me know what you decide to do and how it goes.
In my opinion electronic data management produces a lot of benefits both for patients and medical practioners. Easy, instantaneous access to the information simultaneously for multiple users radically increases the efficacy of the whole process of diagnostics, decision-making, treatment and follow up. First of all, it speeds up the documenting, makes all decisions faster, greatly improves cooperation between the specialists, allows remote work from any place etc. However, most wonderful thing is entry validation. All that is entered in electronic docs first is automatically checked for errors (especially for wrong numbers) and only then stored in the records. And even more there typically is a cross-validation between the different entries that greatly reduces possibility and frequency of diagnostic errors and wrong treatment decisions. Also, electronic records if regularly backed up is actually eternal. Finally, electronic records at any moment may be printed and become paper records.
Check out Think EHR by Marand. My personal opinion is that's where the future of EMRs are.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Medicine
- Epidemiology