Chapter 14
Keeping Your Patients Healthy with an EHR
In This Chapter
Identifying patient groups
Establishing outcomes
Providing integrated services
Sharing report data
You’re probably pretty psyched about all the ways EHR will benefit you and your practice staff. Less paper, greater efficiency, and streamlined workflows are all huge bonuses. Now, though, it’s time to think about some ways EHR can benefit your patients. Aside from faster service and features, such as electronic prescribing (which, admit it, is pretty cool), another big payoff for patients is better health. When you use an EHR, you increase your ability to provide directed patient care that will help both you and your patients manage healthcare needs in a way that promotes long-term health benefits.
The key term in this chapter is care management, which is simply the coordination of healthcare services to meet the needs of an individual or a population of patients. Not unlike care coordination (which is more about the individual steps than the overall concept or plan), care management encompasses an umbrella process that reviews, plans, implements, coordinates, tracks, and evaluates functions and services to manage healthcare needs. Figure 14-1 shows how EHR care management fits with some of the other functions of the clinical setting.
When setting up your plans for care management, think about your practice’s quality goals, which may include such topics as efficiency, safety, effectiveness, patient-centered focus, ...
