How EHR integration helps achieve patient-centered care

This makes electronic health records one of the key tools in patient-centric healthcare. According to PEW research, 61% of US patients want to be able to access their medical records via a mobile device or an online patient portal. The same study states that most respondents also agree that clinicians should be able to easily exchange patients’ information, as it improves the quality of care services. 

However, to ensure easy data exchange, healthcare providers should integrate EHR software with other systems that collect, store, manage, and visualize patient data.

Essential components of patient-centered care

According to the Picker Institute, medical professionals who want to adopt a more patient-centered approach should incorporate the following eight practices:

1. Understand and honor patients’ values, preferences, and expressed needs 
2. Educate patients about their health so they can make informed decisions 
3. Provide primary care regardless of the patient’s ethnicity, income, and other social determinants 
4. Support patients emotionally 
5. Emphasize the impact of patients’ family and friends on their health 
6. Transfer patients between care settings securely and smoothly
7. Ensure patients’ physical safety and well-being 
8. Collaborate with other medical professionals that deliver care to your patients 

Clinicians and other healthcare staff members usually have to put in extra time and effort to achieve this level of care. While healthcare software is aimed to help healthcare professionals conserve much-needed time and effort, it is now crucial that different systems should be well integrated, or otherwise medical data can get lost or compromised and healthcare workflows will be hindered. 

For example, a patient portal with feedback-gathering capabilities seems like a great tool to understand patients’ preferences and needs. However, such portals are useless to clinicians if they can’t access this data during the consultation.

Shifting focus from the admin tasks to the patients

Medical professionals use medical information during patient consultations, so they typically have electronic health records opened on their computers during office hours. According to multiple studies, the more systems clinicians have to interact with during the day and the more windows they have to open, the faster they start experiencing job fatigue. Job fatigue and consequent burnout contribute to medical staff becoming unable to provide emotional support and personalized care to patients.

Therefore, healthcare providers need to automatically consolidate as much patient information into EHR as possible. For example, if medical practitioners could open a single system and see patients’ lab test results, medical history, and scheduled upcoming appointments, instead of flipping through separate EHR, laboratory and PRM software, they would be less distracted and overwhelmed. Freeing clinicians from manual routine tasks (e.g., filing clinical notes into several disparate systems) allows them to focus on the patients, spend more time supporting and educating them, and dig deeper into their cases to provide the most relevant care.

Key solutions to integrate with EHR

1. Patient portals 

Portals are essential to patient-centered care, as they provide patients with access to their health information, test results, and appointment schedules. They also allow healthcare providers to assess patients’ expectations and get their feedback via questionnaires and pre-appointment forms and educate them about their conditions, treatment options, and disease prevention. 

Integrating patient portals with EHR systems helps to update patient information in real-time, providing medical professionals with a full view of not only patients’ medical history but also their socioeconomic status (SES), preferences, and other valuable individual characteristics that influence the approach to medical care. 

1. Telehealth 

The rise of telehealth has improved healthcare accessibility and continuity and also drove the adoption of patient-centered care. Integrating EHR with telehealth platforms ensures that clinicians offering online consultations are as informed about their patients’ health as those seeing patients in their offices. As a result, patients won’t have to sacrifice the comfort and safety of their homes to get quality care.

1. Health information exchange (HIE) 

Implementing HIE software promotes secure sharing of patient information across different healthcare organizations. According to the patient-centered care approach, patients can choose freely between providers, so their medical information should be available to all doctors they turn to. HIE integration with EHR ensures that patients don’t have to tell their entire health story each time they are referred to a different specialist or switch healthcare providers.

1. Clinical decision support systems 

Clinical decision support (CDS) systems help medical professionals make more accurate health decisions by analyzing patient data, comparing it against the knowledge base, and providing diagnostic suggestions or treatment recommendations. Consequently, the more patient data these solutions process, the better decision support they can deliver. Integrating such tools with EHR ensures that patient data stored there can be securely transferred to the CDS for processing. Together with electronic health records and various medical knowledge bases, CDS systems help to tailor treatment plans to patients’ unique conditions and needs. 

In conclusion

While most professionals agree that both clinicians and patients will benefit from a patient-centered healthcare approach, it's not that easy to achieve. Modern healthcare organizations employ multiple systems that aid medical personnel in their everyday tasks. However, when not integrated into a cohesive IT ecosystem, healthcare software can complicate clinicians’ workflows with tasks like transferring data between systems, filling out forms, and reading reports. 

Since the electronic health records software is central for patient-focused care delivery, other systems should be well-integrated with it. The more patient data will flow freely and securely into the EHR, the more personalized care will healthcare professionals deliver.