How Are Electronic Health Records Helping Medical Fraternity?
Charting is something many doctors and members of the hospital administrative staff dread as it involves a ton of paperwork. Plus, with the rapidly rising number of patients at all kinds of healthcare facilities, filling and maintaining such records over the long term have been giving the medical fraternity metaphorical heart attacks. Then, there is always the added risk of these pen-and-paper records getting misplaced or torn up (accidentally). This paperwork is an even-severer headache for private practices, where individual doctors not only have to deal with patients but also run a business.
Electronic Health Record (EHR) Market - Global Opportunity & Demand Forecast Report
To get respite from such long, complex, and repetitive stuff, healthcare providers are shifting to electronic health records (EHRs), which are essentially computer programs that allow one to file all patient-related information in the digital form. Therefore, P&S Intelligence expects the EHR market value to increase from $22.3 billion in 2017 to $30.4 billion by 2023, at a 5.4% CAGR between 2018 and 2023. Apart from patient management, EHRs are increasingly being used for e-prescriptions, practice management, population health management, referral management, and many other purposes.
Among all, the medical fraternity is currently using this technology the most for practice management. The term ‘practice management’ refers to all non-clinical aspects of healthcare, including appointment scheduling, patient registration and pre-visit check-ins, billing, regulatory compliance, staff hiring and payroll processing, claims processing, and even marketing. From individual doctors to large healthcare firms with multiple medical facilities, everyone is using EHRs to simplify their practice management and make it cost-effective.
Moreover, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sought $100 million in funding in 2019 to use EHRs to ascertain the safety of drugs, as the centrally available information, specifically those filed in EHRs deployed on the web or cloud, allows researchers to see the drug trial results and analyze them. This initiative is also aimed at allowing patients to stay on top of the latest in drug development. Due to such initiatives, North America has been the largest EHR market till now. Moreover, the region boasts advanced IT infrastructure and high state-led healthcare spending, which allow doctors to procure and use such technologies.
Therefore, as running a healthcare business becomes more complex, the usage of electronic health records will pick up rapidly.