Increase Your Facility’s Revenue with the Electronic Medical Records

The big question when Electronic Medical Records is being talked about is if it can really increase revenues, and if it can, how? It’s already more than one year since the country was put to a state of recession. Even private companies are not spared. Some of the employees of other privately and governmentally owned companies are being laid-off just to cut down costs, including the hospitals. Fundings and donations from the private sectors are also affected. Because of the challenges in economy that the country is facing today, some physicians are being squeezed by insurance companies to accept reimbursements that are lower than expected.
And with that, any investment with an EMR can be highly justified if it can be of great help in increasing revenues, decreasing healthcare cost and in improving patient care which would lead to the optimization of reimbursements, collections and providing quality customer services.
The Electronic Medical Records can increase revenues in so many ways by improving the facility’s charge capture. Many performed services in a physician’s office or hospital are lost or not billed because of the staff may complete leave out or may have wrongly enter fewer units when the traditional paper based charts and medical records are used. The EMR can increase revenues by grabbing hold of charges for all services provided by the physician and the facility, thus the avoidance of revenues being lost.
The Electronic Medical Records also maximize billing by using system recommended billing codes that are based on the services that are precisely recorded in the EMR. Whereas in the traditional paper-based charts, some physicians are using a lower billing code just to stay on the safe side of the law and thereby losing a big sum.
Productivity of the staff is also increase when the EMR is integrated in the facility. Without the use of EMR, physicians, nurses and pother members of the health care team have to spend a few minutes per patient or task encounter. Writing down the orders in the physician’s order sheet takes time and needs to be reviewed for errors or miscalculations of prescribed drug before the doctor can sign the order. However, despite that nurses are sometimes having a hard time deciphering the physician’s handwriting, taking again a lot of time. The EMR can process handwritings and progress notes are automatically generated in the EMR’s system saving the staff a lot of time. The saved time can then be spent on other patients in the ER or consultation rooms. And the result is an increase in the revenue.
The electronic medical records software also increases the services offered by the facility with its health maintenance reminders. The EMR provides a computerized reminders and prompts that are sent to the patients who are due for their follow-up visit in the clinic. This increases revenue by helping the physician provide quality patient care by not letting the patients miss their annual or monthly check-ups.
The benefits that the Electronic Medical Records offer in terms of increasing the revenue is highly dependent from practice to practice and the type of facility involved. The key to success depends on the facility’s willingness to be subjected in full-automation and to perform overall adjustments to maximize the efficiency in work flow.