• Describe an EMR and what are its main characteristics and potential benefits to a hospital. How did these influence the decision to adopt an EMR at SHC? What other reasons were influential?
EMR: -
EMR stands for electronic medical record. It is primarily employed at an institution that provides health care facilities i.e. at a hospital or at a physician’s clinic. Its primary purpose is to improve the communication among different departments of a hospital to increase productivity, to minimize errors and to improve customer care.
Main Characteristics: -
One of the main characteristics of EMR is its cohesive bond with information and technology (IT). The reason for employing IT is to make sure that all the organizational information stored in hospital’s mainframe can be communed to particular departments, which need particular information. Of course this approach takes technical expertise of people associated with IT and additional expenses, but on the bright side it decreases all the other costs i.e. cost of paper based information system. Thus, decreases the errors and mishaps by a considerable margin and saves a lot of time that can be utilized in other areas of the hospital to increase productivity.
Potential Benefits of EMR: -
Time Saving:
EMR is most beneficial when it comes to time saving. In times of recession, where many hospitals are closing down or going bankrupt, EMR comes as life saver in maintaining and obtaining patient records. It is particularly helpful in times of quarantine and medical panics where manually trying to get patient information could be a tedious task, that might take a lot of time, but with EMR this problem has been solved comprehensively. All the doctors, surgeons, technicians or attending physician has to enter the
