There is no shortage of grueling tales about how electronic health records have caused riffs in the
medical community. Does it have to be so difficult?
It’s true that there is more required of physicians today and it’s almost always tasks that take them away from what they do best – care for their patients. Some will blame everything on electronic health records because just about every interaction needs a digital twin – a record that documents exactly what every patient has encountered during their treatment.
Some experts will say that today’s electronic health records are too focused on data entry and don’t do much for providers when it comes to performing even the simplest search functions to access specific data. This is due to the poor design of the electronic health records system. Due to these inadequacies, we’re seeing more dissatisfied physicians who would rather be caring for their patients than spending time with data entry tasks. To make matters worse, many of the solutions out there are just as expensive as they are clunky.
Despite these inadequacies, electronic health records are a requirement, which is why the industry is growing by a rate of about seven percent per year. Accenture has forecast that the market will hit $9.3 billion by the end of 2015. Globally, it’s expected to hit $22.2 billion at the same time.
What physicians are looking for is an ability to deliver higher quality patient care and more reasonable control of the environment in which they work. Doctors actually see the importance of electronic health records, and less than 20 percent of them would want to return to a paper-only medical records process. They just want a system that doesn’t break the bank and allows them to more easily deal with their records.
Usability with most systems isn’t where it needs to be. Many find that there are too many electronic messages and alerts that pop up, poor clinical workflows and time-consuming data entry practices. Most disappointing is the inability to exchange health information electronically. This forces physicians to use a fax machine to transfer documents
There is a vendor listening to physicians about their concerns. OffSite Image Management, Inc., is a company that offers cost-effective solutions that work across disparate systems because of the vendor neutral architecture used in the solutions. OffSite can help with electronic health records for radiology images with better results than any other vendor, and do it more affordably by using DICOM technology.
With a focus on rural and critical care hospital radiology services, OffSite knows that limited budgets often limit the quality of resources available to these rural yet critical healthcare providers. Vendor neutral archiving, PACS solutions, HIE solutions, off site data storage and business continuity solutions and a cloud management solution are all offered at extremely competitive rates. Furthermore, these solutions are state-of-the-art. Contact us today to get your practice up and running with the best solutions on the market.