The Electronic Health Record (EHR)

The Electronic Health Record (EHR), and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) serve as an electronic replacement for paper records. It is an individual patient's medical record in digital format and contains people's demographics, diagnoses, radiolgy reports, progress notes, medications, immunizations, laboratory findings, and medical coding information. Many medical practices and physicians utilize EMR software, and speech recognition programs together as they transition toward a paperless office. It serves as a doctor's own electronic record of his, or her patient's medical care and is updated each time the patient is seen.

EMR vs. EHR...

While the EMR is for a doctor's own use in-house for his patients, the EHR allows communication with other doctors, as well as medical billing, and medical transcriptionist professionals. It is a record of a patient's long-term and aggregate health information generated by one, or more encounters in any medical care delivering system. The EHR, and EMR software and databases must be fully HIPAA compliant. When a caregiver, or allied health professional needs to access the patient's record, it requires a unique login ID (user name and password) for each user to access the system.

President Obama has committed $10 billion each year for five years to a healthcare IT program that includes helping doctors install electronic medical records (EMR) systems in their practices.

The HITECH Act: Electronic Health Records and Meaningful Use

“Within the next five years, the use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Personal Health Records (PHR) will become more widespread,” said Harry Wang, Director of Health and Mobile Product Research at Parks Associates. “Government incentives, new technologies, and a growing need for more efficient and effective healthcare will drive the market toward more integrated and patient-centric medical record solutions and applications.”