Healthcare reform is on everyone's mind. Making Paper Easy is proud to present the first in a four-part series of articles addressing the benefits and challenges of making the vision of well-implemented digital patient record a reality.

The following is excerpted from Petra Beck's article, “Get a more complete picture of patient health.”

The elderly woman presents with an irregular heartbeat and heart palpitations. She appears dazed and confused, and has difficulty remembering her medications.

“Water pills,” she says finally. “And blood thinner, I think.”

Meanwhile, one of the medical staff has pulled up the patient’s health record at an emergency department workstation.

“OK, here we are,” the doctor says. “Triamterene and Coumadin. Let’s work up this lady’s potassium levels STAT.”

Sure enough, the woman is suffering from hyperkalemia (excess potassium). A quick dose of calcium chloride and her condition is stabilized. And thus the patient and the hospital and healthcare system—are spared unnecessary procedures and expenses by knowing the facts.

The promise of an accessible health history that speaks volumes when seconds count.

The vision is simple: with a few clicks of a mouse, you can see every relevant piece of information that you are authorized to access pertaining to a patient on a computer monitor. These can be radiological images, handwritten physician notes, requisitions, and lab reports. Gathered in one place, with controlled privacy, clinicians and administrative staff can have access to an audit trail of a patient’s health and benefit history.

While this vision is advancing under many names, there’s broad consensus that the day of the electronic medical record (EMR) is drawing closer. In fact, in the United States it’s been raised to the level of a Presidential mandate, to be realized within the next 10 years.

"We’ve got 21st century medical practices, but 19th century paperwork system[s]… There’s a better way to enable our healthcare system to wring out inefficiencies and to protect our patients. So medical electronic records is going to be one of the great innovations in medicine." --George W. Bush, January 26, 2005

What’s standing in our way?

Much of the required technology exists today. But according to a 2005 RAND Corporation study cited in the September 14, 2005 issue of “Health Affairs,” only about 20 to 25 percent of hospitals and 15 to 20 percent of physician offices have adopted any type of patient information system, and those systems are generally limited in their ability to share information with other providers.

As any observer of the medical information scene can tell you, much work remains to be done before the EMR becomes a widespread reality. Important hurdles remain. Standards must be written. Cross-organizational rules for the exchange of information must be hashed out. HIPAA transaction and code sets are still evolving. Cultural barriers must be breached. And funding must be secured.

Build an access ramp to your future electronic patient data interchanges.

Fortunately, clinicians and healthcare administrators can jumpstart an important facet of the EMR without waiting for consensus. By digitizing documents into electronic images, reports, forms, and other types of paperwork, they can be posted for online sharing. This leverages mature technology proven through many years of application in highly accountable, paper-intensive industries including financial services, insurance, and federal, state, and local government.

Called infoimaging, this technology represents the convergence of image and information for presentation to users under one interface. It’s a cornerstone of what the healthcare industry is driving toward with its vision of a unified EMR. It helps meet the requirements of HIPAA at the same time it simplifies
consultation among clinicians. Plus, the EMR opens up new avenues to statistical analysis of disease and care. Best of all, you can start implementing it today.

i/oTrak is committed to making paper easier. We are a Kodak Authorized Info & Photo Scanning Equipment Reseller and Document Conversion Center. We offer a range of back-office services to help businesses of all sizes with their document needs, including E-Z Scan, E-Z Store, E-Z Shred, and E-Z Send. For a complete copy of Petra Beck's article featured in this series, click here.