I was just working on getting an idea of the benefits an EMR system can bring to the healthcare unit. I came across the following EMR benefits which I may append as I get to learn more

EMR Benefits

Complete data: System-wide EMRs have greatly increased the amount of
patient information by populating the database with outpatient office visits
as well as inpatient hospital stays.

Information accuracy: Electronic data entry eliminates misinformation
from illegible handwriting on patient charts.

Safer treatment: Complete medical records, including at least a problem
list, allergies and medications, leads to safer treatment. Regular use of alerts
makes physicians more aware of safety issues about patient treatment.

Collaboration and consultation: EMRs allow multiple clinicians to organize,
configure and view patient data in multiple ways, which encourages collaboration
and consultation about diagnosis and treatment.

Real time availability: All events on a patient’s record are entered upon
transaction, collected in a single file, kept up-to-date and available immediately.
Previously, clinicians waited for paperwork to arrive or initiated treatment
with an incomplete file.

Speed and length of stay: Use of EMRs, especially in ERs, reduces treatment
time and improves patient outcomes. Quicker, more accurate and
safer medical treatment facilitated by an EMR has been proven to reduce
the length of inpatient stay by 10 percent or more.

Stress reduction: A beneficial side effect of relying on the EMR for patient
care is reduction among clinicians of the incidence of pressure ulcers stage
2 or more from 4.2 percent to 1.5 percent.

Adverse Drug Reaction Events : EMR helps reducing adverse drug events in the inpatient setting as well as ambulatory settings

Evidence Based Recommendations : EMR systems can integrate evidence-based recommendations for preventive services (such as screening exams)
with patient data (such as age, sex, and family history) to identify patients needing specific services.

Templates for Consistency : Condition-specific encounter templates implemented in an EMR system can ensure consistent recording of disease specific clinical results, leading to better clinical decisions and outcomes

Increased Compliance to Preventive Care : Reminders to patients generated by EMR systems have been shown to increase patients’ compliance with preventive
care recommendations when the reminders are merely interjected into traditional outpatient workflows

Electronic Messaging : Electronic messaging offers a low-cost, efficient means of distributing reminders to patients and responding to patients’ inquiries

Remote Monitoring Systems : Remote monitoring systems can transmit patients’ vital signs and other biodata directly from their homes to their providers,allowing nurse case managers to respond quickly to incipient problems

Elapsed time from medication orders to medication dispensing. The Stage 6 benchmarks in this area appear to be 15 to 20 minutes for routine orders, and less than 10 minutes for STATS.

Diagnostic report turn-around. The Stage 6 hospitals are reporting turnaround times in minutes instead of hours.

Medication errors. Stage 6 hospitals are finding more medication errors, but
are also able to show significant reductions in medication errors. In one case a
hospital has prevented 170 wrong patient errors; 1,500 wrong drug errors; 203
wrong dose errors; 2,947 wrong time errors; and 26 wrong route errors out of
158,684 administered doses. Another facility reports that 42 percent of errors
attributed to handwriting have been eliminated, and omitted drugs have been
reduced by 70 percent.

Reduction in agency nurses. Two facilities reported a reduction in the use
of agency nurses, and one facility does not currently use agency nurses. One
facility reports that approximately $2 million of agency nursing costs has been
eliminated at their facility.

Reduction in nursing overtime. Only one facility reports a reduction in nursing
overtime that has resulted in a $300,000 annual savings. Most of the Stage 6
hospitals report they have not seen any reduction in nursing overtime. One of
the facilities reported that since nurses are documenting at the bedside, the time
saved is being used for patient care. One organization reported that nursing
overtime is actually increased. It is apparent from the diversity of results that
regional and competitive environments will continue to produce varied results
on this subject

Length of Stay (LOS). The Stage 6 hospitals sharing metrics in this area had
either reduced their LOS metrics or maintained the same LOS metrics with
increasing census and acuity. HIMSS Analytics is conducting research on the
correlation of EMRAM stages/scores and LOS that is projected to be published
in September 2007. What we are finding to date is a reverse correlation – higher
EMRAM stages/scores have a reverse correlation to LOS (the higher the score
the lower the LOS).

Billing. This question was asked relative to the HIPAA Claims Attachment
regulations that will be effective within the next 24 to 36 months. Currently one
Stage 6 hospital reports a reduction in the time it takes to post both inpatient and
outpatient bills. Another hospital reports improvements in charge capture.

Claims Denials. Coding denials at one facility dropped from 9.2 to 2.2 percent
and overall denials dropped from 23 to 10 percent

Competitive market advantages. There were many responses given by Stage 6
hospitals in this area. Most of the responses were centered around patient safety
and clinician support to facilitate better patient care with aggressive marketing
of their EMR advantages to win patients via radio, TV, and Web/portal
marketing programs.

Wikipedia’s definition of Hospital Information Systems

“A hospital information system (HIS), variously also called clinical information system (CIS) is a comprehensive, integrated information system designed to manage the administrative, financial and clinical aspects of a hospital. This encompasses paper-based information processing as well as data processing machines.”

A beg to differ.

There are essentially two major activity segments in which a typical hospital is divided

-Hospital Administration
-Clinical Care Management

Hospial Administration typically includes administrative, financial, day-to-day activities, patients in-bound and out-bound traffic, scheduling, billing and all the other activities.

Clinical Care Management typically includes everything to do with patient’s clinical activities to Interacting with other entities involved in Patient care. This includes Patient encounters, patients medical history records, patient surgeries, medical prescription, pharmacy Integration, Laboratory Integration, Medical equipment interfacing and much more.

Hence clubbing Clinical care management and hospital administration in my opinion is not a good idea.

Hospital administration activities are more of the surrounding activities which revolves more importantly around the financial aspects of the hospital, whereas Clinical management deals with Patient care and safety.

Majority of the Information technology today hits the first section within the hospitals and provide really intutive and easy to use hospital management/information systems. This solutions will have ability to register patients, schedule patients, print bills, manage hospital finances, manage inventories, manage laundries, resource planning and other business functions.

Clinical Information Systems also called “CIS” is an Information technology solution which will be use to increase efficiency in the neglected area of Clinical Management systems. CIS should provide ways and means to improve Quality of clinical care. There is one more general synonym for CIS widespread in the market and this is known as “EMR”. And I must admit this is much closer to CIS than HIS, although not exactly the same. EMR stands for Electronic Medical Record. This is the patient’s medical record which is stored electonically. The entire patient’s medical history is captured electronically in the medical record. However EMR is one part and rather an important part of Clinical Information System. However CIS is much more than just EMR. CIS is targetted to integrate all the clinical activities inside a healthcare unit so that there is seamless interaction between all the eligible clinical systems to attain total patient safety. So along with EMR, one would also have an integrated laboratory, integration pharmacy, integrated nursing,integrated equipments. CIS systems also provide decision support tools to make clinicians better medical decisions based on gathered historical data. They also have clinical alerts capabilities which will allow required timely updates.

To conclude, Clinical Information Sytems are much more than Hospital Information systems or Electronic Medical Records. Clinical Information Systems are built to enchance the overall Clinical Information Workflow rather than just capturing the Patient’s data electronically or increasing hospital administration efficiences.