Collaboration in Care: Custom EHR Features for Enhanced Team Communication

Which is one of the most collaborative and coordinated industries in the world?

Believe it or not, it surely is the healthcare industry. Let me explain!

The journey starts with the patient experiencing some mild health concerns and then moving ahead with the healthcare provider for consultation. From here, the real healthcare journey starts, and other members providing healthcare services get involved, such as pathologists, specialists, nurses, pharmacists, etc.

Here it is important for everyone to be on the same page and work towards the same goal. However, despite the piling pressure the healthcare industry has been very effective in keeping the world fit, healthy and taking the human race forward.

Having said that, the process of collaboration and communication in the healthcare industry has evolved significantly, leading to better patient health outcomes. However, the introduction of custom electronic health records (EHRs) have simplified the process and enabled healthcare providers to take their practice digital.

But did you know that there are custom EHR features for care collaboration that can literally change the face of your practice?

Yes, these custom EHR features can reduce the time spent on care delivery and eliminate duplicate tests and other communication gaps.

In this blog, let’s explore these custom EHR features in healthcare and how it can change the nature of healthcare delivery with efficiency and integrity.

Real-Time Communication Tools

To begin with, the communication tools that you can include while building your own EHR set the bedrock for enhanced communication. The real-time communication features in custom EHR allow the entire team to be aware of even minor changes in care plans or other aspects. To give you an idea about these communication features in custom EHR, here are a few things that you must know:

1. Integrated Messaging: Integrated messaging in the software allows patients or providers to proactively start a conversation. Furthermore, the HIPAA compliance of these tools allows secure messaging while EHR software development, which proves crucial in delivering timely care with avoiding unnecessary mistakes such as duplication, etc.

2. Video Conferencing: Video conferencing is necessary for your digital healthcare practice. With integration with telehealth platforms, virtual consultation is made possible, where the entire care team can be present to know the patient better and set the base of delivery coordinated care. This not only enables your practice to remotely collaborate with the care team members but also allows you to make informed decisions in time to avoid any further complications of patient health.

3. Notifications and Alerts: In virtual care delivery, there are chances that a care provider updates something in the EHR and other members are not being notified about it. Well, with customizable EHR features for enhancing team communication with EHR, real-time notifications and alerts can be sent to every care team member. This ensures the timely nature of care delivery for critical events and tasks. Furthermore, it also improves the response time of the care providers, and patient care is streamlined and well-coordinated while making informed decisions.

Shared Calendars & Scheduling

When you are offering care virtually and using your EHR system as a base for care delivery, then you need a platform where you can easily and effectively manage appointments and other things, right? This can be done with customizable EHR features for care collaboration, such as shared calendars and scheduling. Let’s see how it can be achieved with custom EHR software development:

1. Centralized Calendar: By developing a centralized calendar for your practice, you can easily allow the patients to schedule their appointments at the time that is available and convenient for them. Furthermore, a shared view of provider schedules makes it easier for everyone to know which time slot is available or booked.

2. Automated Scheduling: The feature of automated scheduling can also be integrated into your custom EHR software. This way, with intelligent scheduling algorithms, future care plan annotations in custom EHR can be set easily and without manual efforts. This reduces the administrative burden for healthcare providers and is a patient-centered communication tool in custom EHR.

3. Real-time Availability Checks: With integrated calendars, the real-time availability of providers and their schedules can be easily checked. This is a crucial communication feature in custom EHR because, in case of a missed appointment, the slot can be allotted to a different patient in real time, saving both time and money for everyone involved.

Document Sharing & Collaboration

While EHRs act as a central sharing point for providers to access patient information, there are still certain aspects that need to be covered that are stored in documents such as pathology lab reports, radiology reports, etc. In such cases, the feature of document sharing can be used in custom EHR features for improved communication and collaboration.

1. Secure Document Sharing: The custom EHR can be used to store and share patient documents with other patients and providers. Furthermore, with its HIPAA-compliant nature, the privacy, security, and integrity of the custom EHR can be ensured. Moreover, you can easily control access to this sensitive information with enhanced and robust security features such as role-based access control, encryptions, etc.

2. Collaborative Document Editing: Along with sharing and storage of these important medical documents, collaborative and real-time document editing features can prove to be extremely beneficial for healthcare providers. It can not only allow healthcare providers to collaborate in real-time while assessing the patient document but also improve the accuracy in diagnosis and decision-making. In short, it improves the overall efficiency of healthcare providers.

Task Management & Workflow Automation

As a clinic or even a hospital using digital technologies to provide care and manage hospitals, coordination and collaboration is extremely important. Especially when it comes to deciding tasks for staff members and healthcare providers, in such cases, these custom EHR features for care collaboration can come in handy:

1. Task Assignment and Tracking: With a simple dashboard for task management, custom EHR enables assignment of tasks and responsibilities to the respective care providers or staff members with just a few clicks. And since everything needs to be documented over the EHR system, you can efficiently manage the progress and deadlines of the tasks without much hassle.

2. Workflow Automation: While task assignment and tracking needs human interventions, there are several tasks that can be automated. For instance, when it comes to scheduling future appointments, or sending reminders, alerts, etc., these tasks can be automated while aligning it with the workflows. This not only reduces manual efforts but also the margin of errors is minimized if not eliminated completely.

3. Reminders and Alerts: Timely reminders for important tasks and deadlines, such as appointments, can also be implemented to enhance team communication with EHR.

Patient Portal Integration

While you are providing all these things to enhance collaboration, there should be a platform where you can manage all the things, right? Well, the patient portal does exactly that for you.

Here are some benefits of enhanced communication in healthcare delivery with a patient portal:

1. Secure Patient Access: With a patient portal, you give your patient a platform to directly stay connected with their health journey. Over the patient portal, patients can view their health records and test results almost instantly and in real-time time. This does not only empower them to proactively take part in their care journey but also contributes to improving patient engagement and satisfaction rate effectively.

2. Message Boards: Patient portals must come with message boards, this is to enable and establish direct communication between patients and providers. Furthermore, it also enhances patient provider relationships, which are crucial for the patient as well as for providers to get the desired health outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions