4 Reasons Why Mobile EHR Is a Must-Have

Mobile EHR is essential for providers looking to optimize the delivery and documentation of medical care. Patients are now becoming increasingly educated “consumers” of medicine. They look for providers that can deliver the best care, as well as providing excellent customer communication and timely billing. For these reasons, providers must continue to provide up to date, evidenced based medical treatment, but also find ways to improve documentation, billing and patient education systems. Because of these demands, Mobile EHR is now a must-have for modern clinicians.

1. Convenient, Quick, and Accurate Documentation

There is a saying known amongst medical students learning proper documentation strategies that “if you don’t document it, you didn’t do it”. This is a frustrating notion for healthcare providers. You can provide excellent evaluation, treatment and patient education components, but if it is not reflected in the visit note, then it is not captured for insurance records and patient history.

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Therefore, it is essential that documentation can be completed in an accurate and timely fashion using mobile devices. The longer the time between the patient encounter and the time the visit note is written, the more likely small but important pieces of information will be omitted. By utilizing mobile EHR, providers are able to capture information into their system at the point of contact with the patient. With practice, providers are able to document with little interruption to the patient encounter and ensure all necessary pieces of history and examination findings are recorded.

2. Mobile EHR Workflow

Good mobile EHR systems include scheduling, calendars, and other administrative processes within their native or web applications. These resources allow the clinician increased autonomy with patient and event scheduling as well as automated tracking for alerts regarding necessary yearly testing for patients and normative values for laboratory findings. These workflows can take of advantage of push notifications to ensure practice staff are alerted in real-time on their preferred device.

3. Collaboration with Other Departments, Labs, and Specialties

Within the clinical practice setting, mobile EHR allows different healthcare providers to communicate their clinical findings and share with other providers on the go. Not only does this improve EHR interoperability, it also improves patient care. Lab work values and radiograph imaging results can be shared across devices, so the overseeing physician is able to make a fast and accurate diagnosis and treatment plan. As mentioned earlier, Mobile EHR also allows all of these findings to be input in real time, which improves timeliness of treatment.

4. Real Time Reporting, Billing, and Outcome Measurement

Mobile EHR also encourages on-time billing and medical reporting. Prior to mobile EHR, many practices were held up in their billing by legacy billing systems and providers that were behind in their paper documentation. With mobile EHR, providers can input their billing at the point of patient encounter. This greatly increases timeliness in billing, which results in faster reimbursement from payers. In addition, mobile EHR increases user engagement with practice outcomes, which, in turn, improves practice reporting processes.