Make Informed Care Decisions With an EHR and Communication Tool Integration

Electronic health records (EHR) are real-time patient health record systems made to securely share patient information with authorized users. Users include those in medical labs, imaging facilities, pharmacies and emergency departments. Essentially, EHRs provide medical information to everyone involved in the patient-care continuum.

OnPage continuously explores new ways to expand its value and enhance healthcare operations and workflows to clients. One such advancement comes from OnPage’s integration with EHR systems, as an effort to leverage the infinite wealth of information that the medical system holds.

The powerful integration converts record-keeping EHR tools into automated, intelligent systems. This post discusses how OnPage’s EHR integrations equip teams with real-time contextual information to make better care decisions.

In this article, you will learn:

• What are electronic health records
• What are the advantages of EHR systems
• What are the disadvantages of EHR systems
• Which clinical systems enhance the system’s deployment
• How OnPage can maximize EHR investments

What Are Electronic Health Records?

EHRs are digital versions of paper medical charts. Electronic records capture patient health information (PHI) at every point of the patient-care continuum, ensuring that records are immediately available to authorized persons. EHRs are patient-centered systems, enabling care teams to securely access one’s medical records from any place at any time.

EHR systems transcend standard clinical data collection to capture a broader scope of capabilities to drive patient care, including:

• Documenting and organizing a patient’s medical history, medications, treatment plans, immunization details, diagnosis, allergies, radiology images, and laboratory and test results
• Allowing easy access to evidence-based tools that the care team can use to make decisions about a patient’s care
• Automating and streamlining the provider workflow

What Are the Advantages of EHR Systems?

EHRs collect every detail that gets generated in the patient’s interaction with care teams. The EHR system’s value proposition lies in its ability to automate and streamline patient data collection. EHR technology provides several benefits, including:

• Improving practice efficiencies and saving costs
• Improving care coordination among care teams
• Improving diagnostics and patient outcomes
• Improving information availability
• Creating an avenue for patients to participate

What Are the Disadvantages of EHR Systems?

As with any other cloud-based technology, one of the major concerns that hospitals have is understanding the true security of EHR systems. While these concerns are not completely irrational, the security of cloud-based technology has significantly improved in recent years with HIPAA’s strict regulations. HIPAA requires these systems to have heightened security, ensuring that sensitive patient information is never intercepted.

Which Clinical Systems Enhance EHR Deployments?

EHR systems cannot trigger alerts and notify healthcare providers of medical STAT orders. Clinical communication and collaboration (CC&C) tech, such as the OnPage system, extends its capabilities beyond the desktop.

In life-and-death situations, physicians use CC&C systems to receive immediate mobile alerts based on STAT orders. EHRs integrate with CC&C solutions to automatically trigger alerts when critical updates are made within the EHR system. These technologies provide a secure medium for sharing contextual patient information on mobile. This way, care teams can be empowered to make informed decisions before providing treatment.

How Does OnPage Maximize EHR Investments?

OnPage’s HIPAA-compliant clinical communications solution integrates seamlessly with popular EHR systems. Once synchronous communication is established through the integration framework, the system continuously samples a patient’s records and triggers OnPage high-priority mobile alerts to the care team.

Benefits of the integration include:

• Automated alerts delivered to mobile app–OnPage automatically routes EHR-based alerts to the specialist on call, based on the on-call schedule configured in the OnPage web console. These rule-based alerts can be programmed to follow an escalation policy, triggering intrusive, loud mobile notifications to the care team.
• HIPAA-compliant alert transmission–OnPage ensures that PHI remains secure to meet HIPAA regulations. OnPage encrypts data at rest and in transit. The encryption allows teams to collaborate on patient data within the app, preventing sensitive details from being intercepted or accessed without authorization.
• Email integration with OnPage–Physicians can securely forward emails containing EHRs and deliver the message to team members via the OnPage mobile app.
• “Read” and “delivery” confirmations–Care teams can view the alert’s “read” and “delivery” status via the EHR dashboard.

Instant Distribution of PHI to Enhance Patient Outcomes

As medical knowledge has broadened and technologies have evolved, the delivery of high-quality, sophisticated patient care requires teams of specialists. However, if teams fail to have effective communications in place, it can sometimes result in a misdiagnosis that increases readmission rates, raises treatment costs and lowers HCAHPS scores.

Powerful CC&C and EHR integrations ensure that teams are on the same page, without having to log in to the EHR system several times a day. Efficiencies are also achieved by closing the communication loop from the time electronic health record systems are updated to when the care team receives real-time alerts.