The technology in the medical field is continuously improving to make lives easier for doctors as well as patients. One such example of this is electronic health records (EHRs). EHRs are computerized systems that keep track of a patient's medical history. They allow doctors to find and connect with previous medical records more easily, making diagnosing and treating patients easier.
However, does this mean EHRs can be integrated with the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) system? In this blog post, we are going to talk about the wonders of EHR and how PostDICOM helps with that.
The functions of Electronic Health Records (EHR) are multifold. Here are some of the primary components of Electronic Health Records:
Health information and data
Report management
Order entry and management
Electronic communication and connectivity
Clinical decision support
Patient support
Administrative processes
Reporting and population health management
There are many ways EHR helps improve the quality of care for patients. Described below are some of the main things EHR contributes.
Undoubtedly, EHRs help healthcare providers by making it easier for them. However, they also improve the quality of patient care and safety. In addition, EHR’s system makes the resources more available to the providers and helps in clinical data management.
The perks of using EHR is that, while patients may consult several doctors for different medical needs, every doctor needs to have comprehensive knowledge about the patient and their health condition. For example, a patient may have both heart and neurological problems, so that they may consult different specialists. EHRs ensure that every provider knows which medications the patient takes by providing electronic prescriptions and medical reports. Having the knowledge of the condition will help both doctors to prescribe medications or prepare a treatment plan that won’t cause problems for the patient.
EHRs also help pharmacies by providing these e-prescriptions, thus eliminating the need to fill out the same form at each doctor’s visit. It puts complete and accurate information about a patient and their medical health history. So, patients are more at peace with the entire paperwork procedure.
Patient involvement is vital for treating conditions like obesity, cardiac problems, diabetes, asthma, etc. EHRs allow patients and healthcare providers to share access with each other to collaborate and make informed decisions. EHR delivers patients access to their current medical records to compare their progress and read the doctor’s review notes in real time. Many EHRs also allow patients to send texts to providers through a secure system.
With the reports in hand, doctors or providers may be able to identify the patient's symptoms. This will let them come up with prompt action in dire situations.
Patients benefit from medical care when healthcare providers have complete information about them. One big plus for EHR is its ability to improve diagnosing diseases and reduce medical errors as much as possible. This results in positive outcomes. EHRs give providers access to a patient’s entire medical history, as we stated above.
EHRs can also alert providers when any safety issue occurs. This allows them to prevent severe consequences for patients before it gets too late. Electronic Health Records can keep track of the patient’s medications and allergy triggers when a medication is prescribed. This allows providers to know which ingredients to avoid when it comes to that particular patient's medications.
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EHR also aims to improve medical practice management by lowering overall costs and maximizing efficiency. Here are some of the effective medical practices EHR has proven benefits.
You can save time with features like centralized chart management, condition-specific queries, and other shortcuts. This can help you work more efficiently and effectively.
Integrated scheduling systems that link appointments directly to progress notes, automate coding and manage claims have all been improved. This makes it easier for busy professionals to keep track of their appointments and coding and get paid for their services.
Patients can easily access their information from any location, making it more convenient for them to manage their health.
Public health systems, such as registries and communicable disease databases, are easily accessible to authorized personnel.
Electronic messages sent to staff, other clinicians, hospitals, labs, and other entities are tracked. This helps to ensure that important communication is not lost or forgotten.
Laboratory tests and diagnostic images are ordered and received as needed.
Yes, it will. EHR systems store textual information such as visit notes and other reports. PACS, or Picture Archiving and Communication System, stores medical images along with providing access to the images.
Accessing either the EHR or PACS separately isn’t the solution, as they can only show a part of the comprehensive picture and not the entire context. It’s also a time-consuming process to check the EHR and then the medical images. To diagnose properly, doctors need to go through the patient’s medical reports as well as the images to extract maximum information.
Now, when PACS are integrated with EHR, doctors and care providers can easily have the complete information of a patient in order to move forward.
Some EHR vendors come with PACS integrated into them that you can license. However, these vendors aren’t explicitly large. So, you may face challenges finding them.
The lack of direct integration is because of the Affordable Care Act, which never provided sufficient incentive for electronic storage in terms of medical images. The vendors thus didn’t want to spend their resources and effort on medical image management if their customers wouldn’t get repaid for it. That literally killed the idea of direct integration between EHR systems and PACS.
Some EHR systems, as well as PACS vendors, come with built-in application programs, aka API. APIs are pathways into the EHR system that enable electronic integration. These APIs use a standard or a module to transfer data between healthcare software apps. Many vendors use the javascript library standards as it’s a pretty straightforward way to connect the PACS to EHRs.
Even if you still use the standard, you will still need to ensure that these EHR-PACS connections are set up in a way that includes appropriate data security. So, getting this right is very crucial to establish an effective PACS-EHR integration.
First of all, let’s understand why PostDICOM’s Cloud PACS is ingenious. Our cloud-based PACS is like any other regular PACS but with a significant difference. The storage and features of the PACS are provided by cloud-based servers. We deal with the hosting, retrieval, and maintenance of data for you. Unlike others, you can easily upload your DICOM images and non-DICOM documents to our cloud-based PACS.
You can do PACS-EHR integration, as PostDICOM is designed with cloud API. The cloud API is provided as a Javascript library and is designed to provide all of the functions needed by medical companies. You can use the API to integrate PostDICOM into your existing applications.
To answer the question of whether EHR can be integrated into PACS, in short, it can be combined to benefit from both systems. And to make it easier for you, PostDICOM’s cloud-based PACS actually help you with the integration, viewing, and retrieval of information and sharing it with others. So, now is the time to switch to PostDICOM if you want to take advantage of both PACS and EHR systems.
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Cloud PACS and Online DICOM ViewerUpload DICOM images and clinical documents to PostDICOM servers. Store, view, collaborate, and share your medical imaging files. |
