Today, one could come across a lot of people supporting the notion “work smart”. Why shouldn’t they? In this fast paced world, everyone wants to ensure cost effectiveness and time saving, without compromising on the quality of work. It also applies to healthcare professionals as well. From large scale organizations to solo providers, physicians aim to extract as much useful information as possible from the huge chunk of data available to them. This is one of the reasons Electronic Medical Records (EMR) have gained popularity amongst physicians. From storing information to filtering it, EMR assists physicians in doing all of that.
Although interoperability has facilitated physicians to share information across multiple locations, but in order to do so, it is important that the information is readily available with physicians. Health IT solutions have definitely come a long way not only in assisting the sharing of information, but also in helping physicians measure how efficiently they are reaching their set targets. The key performance indicators (KPI) dashboards in the EMR allow physicians to do the later part.
Time is of the essence and with limited time available, physicians cannot afford to get into the hassles of manually keeping track of performance indicators, and as a result they end up making errors. Thanks to electronic medical record technology, they now come with built-in KPIs to provide a graphical summary of the practice objectives. Physicians can easily assess if the practice performance is up to par or not. Keeping in view the meaningful use objectives and requirements, established EMR vendors do not want physicians to lose on the government’s financial incentives, which is the reason why the KPI dashboards built-in renowned EMRs comply with meaningful use requirements. It is expected that the meaningful use stage 3 would expect physicians to use KPIs to improve the quality of care and eliminate care disparity.
More interestingly, today, even the practice management software comes with built-in KPI dashboards. While the one in EMR helps physicians with the clinical matters, the one in practice management helps them assess the financial health of the practice. From providing graphical summary of monthly patient visits to that of practice revenue to accounts receivable collection period etc, the KPI dashboards provide extensive information about the administrative matters. Established product vendors also provide the option of customizing the dashboard – helping physicians prioritize their requirements and tasks.