Electronic records are the norm now for doctors and their patients. It is unusual to have paper records because they need storage space to keep them. Most of these records are transcribed by a medical transcription company into electronic format to streamline an office or hospital’s record-keeping operations.
However, electronic medical and health records are two very different kinds of electronic records. It is assumed that they are the same, and even medical administration staff interchange the phrases when describing electronic records for patient care. Here is what makes these two kinds of records different and how they are transcribed and stored electronically.
An EHR, or electronic health record, is a document that tracks your visits and reasons for seeing a particular doctor or clinician. For example, a private practice OB/GYN may keep an EHR on a patient who has been seeing them for years. The record only contains the details of each of the visits to the OB/GYN and not much else.
The health of the patient is recorded in this file, but the file doesn’t travel outside of this particular doctor’s office. If the patient decides to see a different OB/GYN, she would need a printed copy of her EHR from that doctor to transfer over to another doctor for the same kind of medical care. A release of the EHR has to be signed by the patient before the patient’s electronic health record can be transferred by paper or electronically over a secure network to the new doctor.
Your EMR, or electronic medical record, encompasses everything you have ever seen a doctor for or been in a hospital. This record is the most extensive medical record about your health, diseases, medication history, surgeries, etc., that you can get. Now imagine putting a paper medical record of immense size for a middle-aged or senior patient on a shelf somewhere and trying to relay that to additional doctors and clinicians.
It would be a sea of papers sent through the mail with the fear of being lost or damaged along the way. It needs to be more secure, and it’s too much to send. It can potentially violate patient confidentiality because of its enormous size.
Those issues are quickly resolved when the entire file is transcribed into electronic health records format. The best part about an EMR is that these records can be linked throughout a particular provider’s network. Any “in-network” provider a patient sees for any medical or health reason has access to duplicate electronic files to provide continuity of care.
Suppose you want to digitize your records and get connected to other doctors and clinicians within your provider network. In that case, you can work with a medical transcription company to get this done. It’s much easier than getting your admin staff to transcribe it all during work hours. It is also a lot faster.
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