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.

Benefits of Enhanced Communication in Healthcare with EHR

By enhancing team communication with EHR, you can clearly improve the quality of care being provided to the patient and achieve better healthcare delivery. Apart from that, these custom EHR features in healthcare can indeed be helpful for both patients and providers. So, without further ado, let’s explore some of the major benefits of enhanced communication in healthcare with EHR:

• Improved Patient Care Coordination: Basically, an EHR contains everything that a provider needs to know about the care journey. Custom EHR features allow authorized access to healthcare providers in the care team so that all the team members can access the comprehensive patient data and care plans to take necessary action to improve patient health outcomes.

• Reduced Errors & Improved Patient Safety: Any updates in the care plans and annotations in custom EHR are directly updated for every care team member in real time. This reduces the chances of human error and improves patient safety. By streamlining communication, this custom EHR software reduces the chances of miscommunication and avoids delays in care delivery.

• Enhanced Team Efficiency & Productivity: One of the major benefits of using EHR systems is that they enhance the clinical workflow and streamline communication, keeping everyone in the loop. This saves valuable time in care delivery and ensures that the authorized personnel has access to the right information in real time. Furthermore, automating some of the processes helps the team to improve their productivity and efficiency.

• Increased Healthcare Provider Satisfaction: By streamlining and improving the communication between healthcare providers, every member of the care team knows what they need to work on. This fosters a positive work environment, boosting the morale of providers and directly impacting their job satisfaction rate.

Custom EHR Features for Effective Communication

User involvement in custom EHR development allows you to customize and add features that can contribute to improving communication between the care team members and patients.

Let’s have a look at some of these communication features in custom EHR:

• Secure Messaging: Secure messaging in custom EHR systems is one of the finest features integrated into the system to enable real-time communication between patient and care team members. Furthermore, you can access this from the platform itself, which makes it more effective and time-saving.

• Shared Care Plans & Notes: This custom EHR feature for care collaboration allows team members to create, edit, and view patient care plans from the centralized location in the system. This way, every member of the care team can review and make informed decisions to improve patient care.

• Patient Portal Integration: Custom EHR features allow you to integrate communication features on the patient portal. This saves a significant amount of time, facilitates secure communication between patient care teams, and increases the chances of keeping the patient engaged in their care activities effectively.

• Role-based Access Control: One of the major patient-centered communication tools in custom EHR is role-based access control. This feature ensures that only authorized personnel can access patient information and that authorized personnel decide on the individual’s roles and permissions.

• Alerts & Notifications: Alerts and notifications are among the most popular custom EHR features for improved communication used by care providers. It provides timely updates on patient lab results, medication changes, and other aspects of their care journey and directly integrates into the EHR, sending an automated text about the update to the patient and the care members.

• Task Management & Delegation: Some patients might have a larger care team, which can be difficult to manage. To make it easier, custom EHR features of task management and delegation allow the care manager to assign tasks, track their progress, and ensure accountability with the team.

Implementing Custom EHR Features

If you are still reading reading this, then you must have got a brief and detailed idea about the custom EHR features and their benefits of managing the practice better. However, the implementation process can be tiring and even disrupt the care delivery process.

So, to help you with that, here are some of the best practices for implementing custom EHR features:

• User Involvement: User involvement in custom EHR development is crucial for its successful implementation. They offer crucial insights about the process and help you in bridging the communication gap. Users here refer to stakeholders, which are usually clinicians, nurses, and administrative staff.

• Workflow Analysis: The next step is to analyze the workflow of your clinical operations and identify the existing communication bottlenecks in the process. Once you address these hindrances, you can tailor your features specifically to them and improve communication and collaboration to enhance care delivery.

• Training & Support: Once you have implemented communication features into your software system, you need to provide effective training and support to the staff so that they can effectively make use of these features.

• Data Security & Privacy: Another important thing that you need to consider while implementing these features is the data security and privacy concerns. Remember that your system adheres to the guidelines set by HIPAA and other regulatory bodies so that the integrity of your practice is maintained.

• Ongoing Evaluation & Improvement: Monitor user adoption and satisfaction while using these custom EHR features. One of the best ways to do that is to gather feedback from them and refine the features to make it easier for them to use and address their pain points.

Frequently Asked Questions