Can an Anesthesia EMR be faster than paper?
The full adoption of an EMR is difficult for any medical practice. It can be particularly challenging for anesthesia groups.
Given the complexity of documentation and requirements for billing, adoption will never be successful unless the system is easy for the end user.
In other words, an anesthesia EMR must be carefully crafted precisely to this end: logical and intuitive at first sight.
For this to work, an EMR must follow a simple philosophy: mimic the look of forms that are familiar to anesthesia providers already.
The workflow must minimize time of entry and maximize efficiency. Anesthesia paper forms should become an elegant interface with discrete points of entry.
To make sure it is faster than documenting on paper, hospital forms can also be added to the system to allow a seamless, digital process.
Here are five key elements that an Anesthesia EMR must include before discarding the paper system:
Incorporate convenient entry features, drop-down selection boxes and handwriting with a stylus.
Facilitate entry and verification of the patient’s record with easy electronic prompts.
Create a complete and compliant record on the first pass with customized hard stops.
Simplify coding through a cross-check process, analyzing codes frequently used by the surgeon.
Pre-populate CPT and ICD-10 codes to reduce potential errors and denied claims.
A system with these features enable you to do your work faster and more accurately than previously on paper. With the ability to report on any digital element that is collected, you can take operational, clinical, quality and revenue cycle management to a new level. Instead of searching through paper records, AneScan provides real time dashboards at your fingertips to unlock insight into your anesthesia practice.
AneScan relies on a plug and play engine that can interface any data into and out of the system, including schedule and demographic information. It is easy to send the completed anesthesia record back to the facility EMR for the legal medical record, and ensure that all case billing information is sent to the billing software.
Ironically, many EMRs are notorious for making tech-enabled care more cumbersome. We built AneScan for this reason: to be faster, more accurate and easier to use than paper.