The initiative made by the US healthcare system to develop a national EHR infrastructure by 2014 is with a view to share and exchange health information successfully, and support the personal health records of all American citizens. If healthcare organizations fail to adopt EMR technology into their medical practices, then the interoperability of a national electronic health record (EHR), personal health record (PHR) and health information exchange (HIE) will be limited.
The sole barrier to physician EMR adoption is the loss of productivity that may come with the need for direct data entry, wherein physicians have to point and click through many drop down menus. This requires a lot of time that could be constructively spent. The solution to this is to go for the services offered by a medical transcription company, which can help physicians reduce the burden of documentation. Reputable medical transcription companies always strive to adapt newer technologies to meet the changing needs of the healthcare industry. This helps them in the EMR adoption process with services such as structured dictation, HL7 interface and structured transcription. The service offered by these companies free up the physicians, giving them more time to interact with patients, provide them a more gratifying experience and benefit from improved patient satisfaction.
In the Speech Recognition Adoption White Paper written by MTIA (Medical Transcription Industry Association) and AHDI (Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity) which was published recently, much emphasis was placed on the medical transcriptionists’ role in driving a national EHR successfully. The paper stated that the medical transcriptionists’ work significantly complements the limits of EMR and speech recognition technology.
In fact, medical transcription plays a significant role in documentation as well as in helping solve the dilemma associated with EMR adoption.
