Differences between EHR and EMR
Electronic health records (EHR) are portable, moving with the patient every time and everywhere they seek treatment. As a result, they include comprehensive details on a person’s medical history. Conversely, electronic medical records (EMR) are typically kept within the office of one physician or healthcare facility. These records contain information on the treatments and diagnoses provided with the specific physician, rather than including the patient’s entire medical history. While an EHR is extremely portable, an EMR is not. When people need to have healthcare information contained in an EMR sent outside the facility, it typically must be printed out and mailed.
About Electronic Health Records
There are many benefits of EHRs. EHRs are a digital version of a patient’s medical record. They’re updated in real-time, allowing medical professionals to make fully informed patient care decisions. These digital medical records are fully secure, allowing only authorized users to access patient information. In addition to providing details on a person’s medical history, the EHR system is designed to assist medical professionals in providing the best possible patient care, using advanced tools to assist with diagnoses and treatment.
Allowing a patient’s entire healthcare team to have on-demand access to their medical records helps to streamline care, making it much more efficient. Healthcare professionals working in settings such as hospitals, clinics, physician’s offices, pharmacies and laboratories can review this information when they need it, rather than waiting for paper medical records to be mailed or making calls to multiple providers to learn more about the person’s medical history.
About Electronic Medical Records
Managed by Electronic Medical Record Speclialists, an EMR is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart, containing their medical history specific to one healthcare facility. These records are used to help a physician diagnose and treat conditions, capture relevant data, keep track of patients due for preventative care visits and improve the overall level of care offered to patients.
While an EMR may be useful to the healthcare facility where it is kept, it isn’t easy to share information stored in the record with other members of the person’s healthcare team. As a result, the use of these types of records is slowly becoming an obsolete practice, as providers want to offer the best possible comprehensive care to their patients.
Though EHRs and EMRs were both designed to optimize patient care, the addition of the former is already having a major impact on the healthcare system. Having a central repository where healthcare professionals can update and access patient information is a critical step in offering comprehensive care. When providers can view detailed health records in real-time, the chance of a misdiagnosis may be significantly decreased, according to researchers.