More hospitals switching to, sharing paperless files
Over the past several years, a large number of health care providers have shifted to electronic medical records and undertaken the effort to digitize documents whenever possible. This is vital not only for privacy reasons, but also because it helps facilities and individual workers more accurately and easily share data. The latter aspect of going paperless in the industry has been particularly fruitful of late.
Last year alone, about 1 in every 3 physicians utilized paperless medical records – whether by sending, receiving, integrating or searching them – and about 1 in 10 did all four, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Further, nearly 78 percent of doctors' practices operating out of an office had been certified for electronic health record systems, up from about 74 percent a year earlier.
What does this mean for care providers?
The continued migration to mostly or entirely paperless health records within doctors' offices is likely to go on for some time, and all the while, states are building and upgrading the infrastructure for that information to be shared among a number of different care providers when needed. However, because this happens on a state-by-state basis, some are ahead of the national average in terms of sending, receiving, or searching this data, while others still lag well behind the national average.
Leveraging the switch
Because so many health care providers have moved to paperless patient records nationwide, industry experts say there's a significant opportunity for the industry as a whole, according to a report from Becker's Hospital Review. Not only can information be shared more easily, but electronic records allow health care decisions to be more closely tailored to each individual patient's needs on an ongoing basis.
"In our line of work, the first major IT move was going electronic," David Chou, vice president and CIO of Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas City in Missouri, told the site. "Now that everyone's there, what's the next part people have to focus on? Innovation. There are so many types of innovation where technology can play a big role. The next phase is innovation focusing in on how we can make it a personalized experience for the patient."
Those care providers that haven't yet made a full switch to the latest technology may benefit from medical records scanning services so their past files are up to date with modern standards as well. That, in turn, provides a benefit to all involved.
