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EMR and Patient Portal, Where’s the link?

Recently I came across a statement which stated Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and patient portals […]

Recently I came across a statement which stated Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and patient portals to be health IT duo. Well, I could not agree less. Since both healthcare providers and patients are two faces of the same coin, the healthcare industry, improvement in care quality and care delivery could not be achieved if anyone of these two are kept out of the loop. This is where EMRs and patient portal become essential for the provision of better healthcare. While EMR helped physicians in improving the quality of care along with getting their hands on the government’s financial incentive funds, patient portals helped augment the overall patient care experience.

“Although both the applications are different and have different purposes, it would not be absurd to say that they are interrelated. Where physicians use EMRs to address needs for clinical documentation, patients use patient portals to access those records whenever required”, says a North Dakota based health IT consultant.

Although EMR has been around for quite some time, the need for intensive EMR implementation initiated with the notion of improved and affordable care along with the idea of evidence based practice. EMRs tended to outcast the antiquated culture of pay for service, thereby introducing the concept of pay for performance. One of the common problems with the US healthcare system was that physicians charged the patients according to the number of visits rather than basing the billing component on the criterion of performance. The ultimate results were increased costs associated with the healthcare along with patient dissatisfaction. Fortunately, electronic medical records have been keeping the pace to eradicate this method. Since all the details and information are electronically stored there are hardly any chances of misleading information. In fact, cases of information fabrication could lead to serious litigations.

There is no doubt that patient engagement requires good deal of attention as well. One of the reasons associated with deteriorated healthcare situation is lack of patient engagement and patient awareness. While some would blame healthcare professionals for that, others would not stop pointing fingers on patients for being negligent. The idea of introducing patient portals was solely to ensure better health coordination. Healthcare conditions are likely to perk up if physicians remain connected with their patients at all times. Alongside reducing paper use and other trivial hassles, patient portals have resulted in better health management. According to statistical reports, advent of patient portals has significantly improved the conditions of healthcare across the US.

One could easily say that when it comes to improving the quality of healthcare, these two distinct applications go hand in hand. While physicians consider electronic medical records to be an essential requirement, the government also increased the importance of patient portals by making patient engagement one of the objectives of meaningful use stage 3 requirements.


Frank Quinn

The writer is a leading Health IT analyst contributing regularly on some of the most pressing topics like Electronic Health Records, Practice Management, eRx, Patient Portal, Billing Services, Compliance and Privacy and Security.

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