13 Must-Have EMR Features & Functions for Healthcare Practice

Overview

Electronic Medical Records have broadened the scope of convenience for patient care, maximizing productivity, and heightening the level of service of healthcare practice. Here are 14 helpful features and functions that you must-have for your EMR.

1. Patient Alerts and Notification

   Your EMR software must have a patient alert and notification system for flexible health maintenance. This feature serves as a reminder for scheduling, billing, and E-prescribe modules. It will help the physicians and staff to quickly make a follow-up on critical patient care notes such as immunizations, exams, consultations, screening, and tests. This feature can also notify your team for important information tasks or requirements that a patient must acquire before the next doctor consultation. Alerts and Notification are helpful as they can send reminders to a patient with an upcoming appointment. Some EMR software also has a high level of customization, so you can create appropriate reminders for tasks and processes you have in your healthcare practice.

2. Patient Portals

   The need for online patient portal software is growing as the healthcare industry continues to pave the way to more patient-centric care. Patient portals can easily connect healthcare providers and patients. It will allow your patients to view their health records anytime and anywhere online. Your patients can also update their personal information and fill-up the necessary health forms before their appointments. It will lessen the administrative and clerical burden for the staff and reduce waiting times for patients too.

3. E-Prescribing

   E-prescribing feature of EMR refers to the electronic simplicity of generating prescriptions via an automated data entry process. It connects participating pharmacies to physicians to eliminate the need to manually write prescriptions and improve patient prescription management. The feature can help increase patient safety and avoid medication errors due to illegibility of manually written prescriptions, drug-allergy reactions, and incorrect diagnosis. The e-prescribing module streamlines refill requests and authorization process, reduces phone calls and callbacks to pharmacies, increases convenience for patients, and lightens the clerical burdens of your staff.

4. Medical Billing Dashboards

   An EMR with medical billing dashboards can streamline your billing process, making it faster and more efficient. It will help get the necessary information from charts onto bills, making it easier for your medical billers to review the bill and chart side-by-side.

5. Lab Orders & Tracking

   A lab order and tracking feature of your EMR make it easier for your staff to retrieve, track, and acquire patient lab results. Healthcare providers will be receiving the results electronically, just quickly upload each lab order with a single click onto the Electronic Medical Record. The lab order system can help in printing and sending automatic faxes too. The patient’s chart will automatically have the lab results so your staff won’t have to match paper documents to patient charts. It will reduce administrative tasks, and results will be acquired faster too.

6. Drug Dispensing Software

   Integrate your EMR with Drug Dispensing Software so the prescriptions and medical records can easily be shared. It will streamline data sharing, increase accuracy in managing drug dispensaries, and reduce data entry errors. Your healthcare practice will also have the proper amount of on-hand medications through the bar code verification feature that tracks your inventory. It syncs with billing as well for automatic transfer of charges.

7. E/M Coding

   E/M Coding functions to help your healthcare practice comply with evaluation and management documentation standards. It aims to ensure healthcare payers have the necessary information they require to payout. Data in the EMR refers to:

   • Complete and legible medical records
   • Reason for the encounter and relevant history
   • Physical exam findings
   • Prior diagnostic test results
   • Assessment, clinical impression, or diagnosis
   • Medical plan of care
   • Date and legible identity of the observer
   • Appropriate health risk factors
   • Patient’s progress, response to and changes in treatment, and revision of diagnosis
   • Diagnosis and treatment codes

8. Document Management

   Document Management feature helps in management and electronic medical record solutions. It has tools that make charting, scheduling, and billing easier. It allows multiple record creation, such as templates, transcription, and dictation. Staff can view patient charts, create notes, and prescriptions in one synchronized database.

9. Centralized Communication

   A centralized communication feature increases communication efficiency between healthcare providers, patients, staff, labs, practices, and payers. A centralized interface will offer options like secure online portal messaging, fax and inter-office messaging, email, text, and voice messaging. It will help you contact your patients easier too.

10. Cloud or Server-Based Option

    Hospitals, clinics, and practices turn to web-based or cloud-based software for centralized communication to make the transition easier. It eliminates the need for hardware and maintenance for servers too. All you need is an internet connection to access your patients’ health records. It will make accessibility and collaboration easier.

11. Mobile Device Accessibility

    Mobile Device Accessibility feature will give you the freedom to work anywhere via mobile devices. Any mobile device can connect to your EMR for access to healthcare practice management, patient portal, and integrated EHR. Physicians and other healthcare providers can easily monitor test results, access patient information, and more.

12. Tablet PC Compatibility

    This feature can provide physicians with what they need for patient care right under their fingertips. They can access electronically and securely all their patients’ records, patient education database, medication database for prescription, documentation, and requests.

13. IMS Clinical

    IMS Clinical is the leading EHR Software System by a trusted name in healthcare. It is user-friendly and the complete EHR system available. It has a wide range of features that makes charting and administrative tasks easier. It will make your office functions more efficient as ever. IMS Clinical EHR meets and exceeds your expectations as you’ll be able to access all your patient information quickly without having to search for charts. It will help your practice reduce the number of labor-intensive tasks in the office while lowering costs, improving communication, and improving patient care.

Bottomline

Get all 13 features in one with the Intelligent Medical Software (IMS) EMR software from 1st Providers Choice. Call 480-782-1116 today to speak with one of our EMR software experts and get started!