How an Integrated EHR and Medical Billing System Can Better Medical Practices

At the moment, when the whole world is suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, the EHR and the Medical Billing System can play a very important role in the healthcare field. They help to track and report any problems much more accurately and faster than the paper system.

In this article, you will understand the importance of an electronic health record (EHR) and a medical billing system for your business, what tasks they solve and how they can facilitate your medical practice.

Medical billing can relieve you of the tasks of processing and managing claims, processing payments and generating revenue. A billing system is engaged in the correct coding of claims, their tracking, and subsequent actions.

It’s very difficult and energy-consuming to independently organize fast and clear billing work. A billing system with EHR software can help. Probably everyone knows that EHR is now integrated into almost every medical institution and without this, the processes in hospitals slow down noticeably. 

An annual review of the EHR field showed that 90 percent of managers believe that integrating electronic medical records, revenue cycle management, and claims processing can significantly increase both the productivity, quality and profit of a medical institution.

How to Quickly Build an EHR System for Healthcare

If you want to quickly implement EHR in your business, then the surest way is to use a ready-made application. But the problem is that not every ready-made program of electronic medical records can become effective specifically for your business.

The strange thing is that when implementing the system, the opinion and need of doctors is ignored. At the same time, 40 percent of doctors complain about the design and compatibility of EHR. In the first stages, entrust this to experienced professionals who will help you configure the application correctly.

You can help with the step-by-step setup of an application that meets your specific needs, changing the interface, creating templates of various specialties, archiving images, managing billing and a portal for patients and much more.

How to Build Your Own EHR System

If you need full and constant control over the functions of EHR, then it is better to develop your own application. Here, you can scale the system with business growth.

The big plus is that you do not need to pay license fees, you are protected from changes in the EHR system and are not limited in access to “one supplier.”

Why Do Healthcare Providers Design Their EHR System:

  • Sale of license and subscription-based access for medical business owners
  • The transition from paper medical documents to electronic. An individual system that can be expanded, improved with business growth
  • Frustration with the practice of other EHR systems
  • The need to expand an existing system and the necessary functions

In any case, the introduction of a billing system and EHR will give a big breakthrough to your business, protect it and save a sufficient amount of funding.

illing-system-with-EHR

Let’s look at the useful innovations that EHR and Billing System can bring to your business.

Medical Cartography

The EHR system collects the necessary information about the patient: condition, treatment, care, etc. Important addition is that the system draws up schedules and saves detailed patient documentation. This is useful to the medical institution during an audit to fix damages. Health workers can save time on scheduling and typing and devote this time to treating patients.

Medical History

The system compiles a detailed patient history after the patient visits the doctor. It includes the history of medication, tests, examinations, surgeries, habits, data on possible allergies or reactions of the body, and much more. Information updates occur regularly, which provides doctors with accurate and up-to-date patient information.

Communication With Pharmacies

This application function saves orders and prescriptions for medicines in the patient card. This greatly facilitates going to the pharmacy and reduces possible errors. The doctor can add the medication and dosages to the patient’s card and send the list directly to the pharmacy immediately after the session. The system immediately checks the preparations for compatibility and patient response based on his analyses and data (height, weight, allergies, etc.).

Information Exchange

To increase the efficiency of medical institutions, the EHR system exchanges patient data with other modules of the system. Doctors no longer must enter important information several times into forms, such as demographic data, indicators of vital functions (temperature, pressure, heart rate). The system will fill out


intervento all'apparato gastrointestinale

Intervento Gastroenterologico

Testo aggiuntivo sull’intervento gastrointestinale.

these forms automatically, and integration with the billing system will help to avoid many errors.

PHI copy

The system saves information in formats suitable for printing, such as PDF. This allows you to quickly send a copy of personal information and charts to the patient. According to HIPAA, a patient can request a copy of the medical information (with some details).

Doctor’s speech recording

The system allows adding a doctor’s voice recording with notes about the patient, instead of typing. These data are collected into the EHR system and can later be corrected by the same doctor. This will help medical staff significantly reduce time and pay more attention to patients.

EHR voice recognition

This is a very useful function of the system because with the help of it you can significantly increase work efficiency and ease the tasks of doctors. The system will allow you to quickly enter patient data using voice, even during the examination.

The main tasks of this function are voice input of data, voice navigation inside the system, adding various dictionaries, adapting the system to the voice of a particular health worker. Thanks to this feature, you can reduce up to 30% of the time spent on paperwork and increase the satisfaction and comfort of health workers.

Patient Portal

The EHR system creates a HIPAA-compliant channel in which a healthcare organization publishes patient data with 24-hour access online. The patient is registered in the application and can view his medical data, as well as a recent visit to the doctor, his discharge, lists of medication, etc.

An interesting feature of the portal is that patients can make an appointment with the doctor without leaving home and without using the telephone systems of the hospital. It is also possible to view the location of each doctor, work schedule and types of checks.

The patient receives a notification by e-mail, text message, or push-notification. Sometimes, a notification will inform you to do some tests before an appointment.

A very important function of the portal is the ability to download personal patient data from a smartphone, fitness tracker or medical device for better diagnosis and treatment.

Also, patients can pay for medical services through the portal, which will make medical practice transparent and improve the quality of customer service.

What The Cost of Implementing an EHR System In a Medical Business Is

Have analyzed the research in EHR, we can conclude that implementing the system will cost approximately $162,000, and $85,000 will be spent on servicing the first year. With the good implementation and operation of your medical institution, you can cover the costs in 2-3 years. After that, the income of one employee will be approximately $23,000 in net profit. 

You should not rely on precisely these amounts because they are approximate and many factors can affect them. Also, there will be some costs, such as buying a license to host EHR on your servers. If you want to use a local model, you need powerful servers, data backup forms, storage, and more.

One common option is the cloud model. Your data is stored on the servers of the provider and you can use it via the internet. Here you will need to pay a regular monthly fee, which you pay every year or month. Sometimes with large growth of employees, a higher fee will be required.

Conclusions

Summarizing everything, we can say that with integrating the EHR  and the billing system in medical institutions, you can significantly reduce costs, increase the comfort and satisfaction of patients and health workers, and also optimize time and work.

Having successfully integrated the EHR system into your business, you will completely forget about paperwork. The practices of your health workers and patients will improve significantly. The main task of implementing EHR is to calculate costs and find a good specialist. 

When the process is completed without failures, a question will surely arise, “Why did not I use this system much earlier?” EHR system and billing is the future of all medical institutions and is definitely the best solution for your business.