EMR has found a strong proponent in President Obama, with a whopping $20 billion dedicated to healthcare IT as part of the stimulus package to boost use of electronic medical record. What does this mean to the medical transcription industry?
To begin with, for the healthcare industry, this will mean better efficiency. For the consumer, the patient, it will mean reduced time spent at physician's office and other healthcare destinations trying to arrive at the right diagnosis and chart out the correct treatment modality. It would also help in early detection and prevention of serious life-threatening diseases like cancer.
EMR offers a great repository of information on past medical history of the patient. This includes the patient's medical and surgical history, family and social history, medications and allergy information, etc. It also stores lab reports, physician to physician communications, and even allows the doctor to prescribe a medication or order a lab evaluation just by the click of a mouse.
Availability of this kind of information about a patient will enable a physician to effectively interview the patient and accurately diagnose and treat the patient's condition. Most importantly, in younger patients, EMR will help the family practice physicians to get into the preventive mode. To elaborate, a patient's medical/surgical/family/social history is known to the physician through EMR. This will tell the doctor if the patient is at risk for any stroke, diabetes, cancer, etc. Knowledge of a future risk will help the physician to take preventive steps and in early detection of any serious disease condition, thereby significantly reducing or eliminating the possibility of surgery or other expensive treatment methods and complications that otherwise would have made life miserable for the patient.
As far as healthcare documentation and transcription goes, advent of EMR will reduce the need for transcription. It will also encourage more and more physicians and healthcare facilities to make use of IT to enhance efficiency. Physicians will not have to dictate the entire history of the patient each time they visit. Dictations will be limited to the history of present illness, physical examination, and impression and plan. Some physicians, who use EMR at the present time, have gone one step ahead and completely eliminated transcription services, fully depending on EMR for documentation. Emergency rooms reports, operative reports, and imaging reports may still be manually transcribed, though there are ways to minimize dictations even in these work types.
I am not a doomsayer predicting death of the industry. In fact, I see a greater opportunity for the medical transcriptionist as EMR begins to rule, which I think is still a decade away. The need for quality transcriptionists with good knowledge of domain will only increase in the future. Therefore, transcriptionists will have to fine tune their skills and most importantly their knowledge of human anatomy and physiology.
To begin with, for the healthcare industry, this will mean better efficiency. For the consumer, the patient, it will mean reduced time spent at physician's office and other healthcare destinations trying to arrive at the right diagnosis and chart out the correct treatment modality. It would also help in early detection and prevention of serious life-threatening diseases like cancer.
EMR offers a great repository of information on past medical history of the patient. This includes the patient's medical and surgical history, family and social history, medications and allergy information, etc. It also stores lab reports, physician to physician communications, and even allows the doctor to prescribe a medication or order a lab evaluation just by the click of a mouse.
Availability of this kind of information about a patient will enable a physician to effectively interview the patient and accurately diagnose and treat the patient's condition. Most importantly, in younger patients, EMR will help the family practice physicians to get into the preventive mode. To elaborate, a patient's medical/surgical/family/social history is known to the physician through EMR. This will tell the doctor if the patient is at risk for any stroke, diabetes, cancer, etc. Knowledge of a future risk will help the physician to take preventive steps and in early detection of any serious disease condition, thereby significantly reducing or eliminating the possibility of surgery or other expensive treatment methods and complications that otherwise would have made life miserable for the patient.
As far as healthcare documentation and transcription goes, advent of EMR will reduce the need for transcription. It will also encourage more and more physicians and healthcare facilities to make use of IT to enhance efficiency. Physicians will not have to dictate the entire history of the patient each time they visit. Dictations will be limited to the history of present illness, physical examination, and impression and plan. Some physicians, who use EMR at the present time, have gone one step ahead and completely eliminated transcription services, fully depending on EMR for documentation. Emergency rooms reports, operative reports, and imaging reports may still be manually transcribed, though there are ways to minimize dictations even in these work types.
I am not a doomsayer predicting death of the industry. In fact, I see a greater opportunity for the medical transcriptionist as EMR begins to rule, which I think is still a decade away. The need for quality transcriptionists with good knowledge of domain will only increase in the future. Therefore, transcriptionists will have to fine tune their skills and most importantly their knowledge of human anatomy and physiology.
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