The overall U.S. healthcare industry has been working towards providing effective healthcare services at affordable prices. In addition, government initiatives, such as the Affordable Care ACT, have made it imperative for healthcare providers to embrace digital exchange of healthcare information to reduce costs of healthcare services. Electronic health records (EHR) are a digital record of patient’s health information, which can be further applied to billing and scheduling appointments. In order to deliver better healthcare management practices, EHR has proved to be an effective tool for healthcare providers to ensure reduction of costs and continuity of care.
Numerous countries across the world have adopted EHR as long-term healthcare strategy. It is expected that EHR will be at the core of next generation healthcare, becoming the backbone for family medicine practices strategy. In order to reap full benefits of the EHR system, healthcare practices require significant transformation to improve the quality of care.
In depth analysis of the patient’s health records enables doctors to reach accurate results in lesser time. In case of emergency rooms, EHR helps the doctor to take a quick overview of the patient’s medical history and act as support system to control the situation. EHRs have proved to be a cost efficient solution and eliminate the requirement of paper work, along with resolving storage issue of traditional billing system.
There is a significant amount of opportunities and benefits for EHRs in the healthcare industry. The adoption of EHR in the global healthcare industry would foster productivity, effectiveness and efficiency and help in reducing healthcare costs across the world. However, due to the fragmented nature of the healthcare industry, there is a substantial need for regulating the exchange of medical information between various care providers, laboratories, insurance companies, and patients, among others.
In order to increase the adoption of EHRs in the health system, U.S government began its EHR incentives program for health systems in the U.S. and provides monetary incentives to the healthcare organizations that make use of EHRs. Moreover, every health system in the U.S. is expected to adopt EHRs to avoid penalties for non-compliance.
Some of the prominent companies in the U.S. electronic health records (EHR) market are Epic System Corporation, Medical Information Technology, Inc. (MEDITECH), Quality Systems, Inc., Cerner Corporation, McKesson Corporation, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., and Computer Programs & Systems, Inc., among others.