January 22, 2010
EMR Benefit You Wouldn’t Expect
Written by: John
Today, I decided that I’d ask people to share a benefit they’ve received from an EMR (or seen received if you’re an EMR vendor) that you didn’t expect to happen when you implemented an EMR.
I’ll start off with one unexpected benefit of an EMR: audit logs.
There’s so many things you can do with audit logs. It resolves so many issues with accountability for a record. You just run a quick report on the audit logs and you know exactly when someone did something in the EMR. This is also true for patients when we check to see for things like when a patient checked in and when they were seen. The audit logs can tell you a lot about your clinic. Plus, it just feels so much more secure knowing that everything that’s being done in the EMR is being audited.
Not really relevant, but I got free breakfast thanks to the audit logs. HIM found a mistake in the EMR that needed to be corrected. One of our Directors went on and on about the breakfast this person would have to bring for making this mistake. She started listing off what she wanted for breakfast. I pull up the audit logs to identify the offending party: sure enough it was the Director who was going on and on that made the mistake. She corrected the mistake and brought a full breakfast.
Ok, now lets hear what EMR benefits surprised you.
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My clinic did not realize they could fax out through the EMR. Last May we started faxing the consult reports to referring physicians. By the end of the year our postage had dropped $6500 from the previous year. The annual run rate for postal savings alone is over $11,000, not to mention the decreased costs of letterhead and envelopes, plus it takes much less time for a transcriptionist to fax a letter than to collate, stuff and address a letter. This savings more than covers our software maintenance fees.
Great post! Our practice has not yet implemented an EMR solution, but we have the same audit tracking through our transcription provider. From Mary’s comment, we get the same benefit of faxing too. Our practice saved over $5,000 in the last few months of 09- after we started with the group. Becasue of our great success with our provider, we may not go the EMR route.
If anyone is wondering, MD-IT is our provider. They have an office here in Denver, but they are national.