A new DOTmed article on EHR and EMR management has some good points on the use of EHR and EMR and the new rules and regulations. This article found some important information about use of EHR and EMR.
- Last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services announced that 257,000 doctors, or about one third, had failed to achieve meaningful use of electronic health records, and would see Medicare payments cut by 1 percent in 2015.
- CMS announced earlier this year that it intends to modify requirements for meaningful use in 2015.
- Hospitals and physician practices are still being required to move down the path to recording and exhanging information in a meaningful way.
- Health IT companies are responding with new products that promise easier image sharing and workflows, time saving, and interoperability.
While the new IT is great for the advancement of healthcare, doctors are facing new burdens. The documentation burden is present more than ever before, and these doctors need assistance if they are going to provide quality care to patients. Medical scribes are growing in popularity, because they can help with the growing burden these doctors face when it comes to documentation.
Here are some recent facts on the growth of medical scribes and EMR:
- The leading scribe trade group predicts the number of scribes working in America will go from about 20,000 today to 100,000 by 2020.
- “Many hospitals have already attempted a solution to contemporary difficulties by transitioning to electronic medical record (EMR) systems,” the association explains on its website. “However, EMR systems require markedly increased time for data entry and management. With ever-increasing patient volume, physicians are progressively short of time to manage such clerical tasks.”
- It projects the population of what it calls “medical transcriptionists” to grow from 84,000 in 2012 to 90,500 in 2022.) The ACMSS is working to develop national standards for what’s now an unlicensed profession, says Kristin Hagen, the group’s executive director.