Electronic medical records (EMRs), mandated
by Obamacare, promised multiple benefits such as shorter time to create
accurate patient healthcare records, monitor and record patient health and
treatment over a period of time, accessible to all providers involved in
patient care, faster processing of claims, eliminate the need to repeat
expensive medical tests, and would help in overall quality of care given to
patients.
Obamacare signed into a law by President
Barrack Obama on March 23, 2010, mandated EMR adoption by all healthcare
institutions but is still not accepted across the board by majority of
physicians in the US. Instead of
increasing patient-doctor interaction time and reducing clinical errors, it fell
short of realizing its intended objectives, and the overall quality of
healthcare is suffering because of that.
The doctors ended up spending a lot of time in front of their computers
to input patient data and digitize information in the EMR that required them to
scroll through multiple drop-down menus drastically reducing patient-care
time. The personal touch is missing from
physicians’ diagnoses and consultations.
Some would still prefer the old style of the narrative which captures
the entire patient story and help in arriving at wholesome treatment
options. The physicians’ critical
thinking and logical rationalization of treatment options for patients could
not be fully facilitated, with more time and attention needed for them to
digitize the patient information and enable billing and coding parameters to
bring about the intended revenue. It is
indeed against the basic philosophy of medicine which intends to cure patients’
illnesses rather than losing time in digitizing information and turning health
care from its originally intended form into a health care business. Thus at this juncture, with the EMRs that
cannot play up to their promise, there is a vital role for medical
transcriptionists (MTs) to bring about accurate healthcare documentation.
Whatever the advancements brought about by
EMRs in storing and retrieval of clinical information, there is always the
human touch that will be needed to make the patient story complete, accurate, referable,
and usable by multiple providers who are treating the patient in his or her
lifetime. Thus it is not an entirely
sunset time for MTs who can still be very proud of their integral role in
clinical documentation and healthcare revenue cycle. Having said so, they ought not to remain
complacent with the traditional way that transcription is practiced but should
keep pace with developments in technology such as advanced EMR platforms,
allied fields of medical billing or coding, so that they can continue to
sustain themselves and develop as multi-talented, multi-faceted professionals
who can take up the challenges of the future and cater to the needs of the
industry.
