Customizing EMR Solutions for Specialized Medical Practices

One of the most pressing concerns in healthcare, especially with specialty care practices, has been the increasing time physicians spend on EMR. A study across 100 million ambulatory visits suggests that, on average, 16 minutes and 14 seconds are spent on EMRs per encounter.

To further break down this time, physicians spend 33% of their time on chart review, 24% on documentation, and almost 17% on ordering. That’s almost the entire encounter time or face-to-face consultation time, right?

Well, understanding the intricacies of healthcare and specialty systems, the daily active usage of these EMR systems also varies. For instance, a study by the Jama Network found that 46 minutes per day are spent in surgical specialties, 86 minutes for medical specialties, and 115 minutes for primary care.

This is because specialized medical practices have unique workflows, complex data types, and unique specialty-driven requirements. And this is one of the major reasons why many specialized practices are ditching off-the-shelf EMR systems and looking for customized EMR development ventures.

But why EMR development?

Well, when healthcare practices choose a custom EMR solution for their specialized practices, they can tailor their EMR functionalities, get better efficiency in documentation, and improve the quality of care they provide. This is because specialty-driven EMR enhances accuracy, reduces administrative burden, and directly improves patient outcomes.

But here you might ask, how can a custom EMR solution for specialized practices help in all this?

Well, let’s explore that in this blog below. So without further ado, let’s get started!

Tailoring Workflows to Specific Specialties

One of the major reasons why healthcare practices choose to build their own EMR is to align the EMR software with the practice’s unique workflow. Every specialty has a unique way of care delivery, and these processes are customized to meet the particular needs of the clinic. That is why EMR customization for medical practices is beneficial. Let’s see some of the intricacies in this:

Starting with the very first phase of care delivery, customizable EMRs can streamline the appointment scheduling process and the way patient information flows in the practice. At this stage, you can also map the patient care journey to the one that best suits your practice. For instance, if you’re a cardiology practice, then consultation and tests come first, whereas in oncology, the scan of the eye is given the first priority.

To further enhance the process, you can leverage the power of AI and ML algorithms to automate the data entry process spanning from specific medical coding, diagnostic data entry and other processes. This will improve efficiency in doing such mundane tasks whose possible application can be seen in managing medication dosages and generating procedure-specific reports.

You can clearly customize your EMR software as per your needs, but it would be pointless if the users were not able to navigate the software easily. That is why the user-friendliness of your EMR software interface must be considered, and your users must be provided with effective and hands-on training.

Note: Depending on the workflows and practices, some of the features that you require often change. Addressing that factor is important, and you need to cater to that as well. That is why we suggest you read this EMR software feature guide to help you build your ideal EMR software.

Some of the practical examples of specialty-specific EMR are:

• Cardiology: customized EMR dashboards to capture accurate data.

• Oncology: Chemotherapy regimen tracking

• Dermatology: Lesion mapping

• Mental Health: Specific note templates to map behavioral health journey

On top of that, with an EMR solution for specialized medical practices, you can embed specialty coding into your practice system, such as ICD-10 for diagnosis, CPT for billing, LOINC for clinical observations and lab tests, and SNOMED codes to support better documentation.

Enhancing Efficiency Through Tailored Design

Healthcare practices deal with different types of patient data, and depending on the specialty, the data changes. This is where managing complex data, including images, lab results, and genetic information in large volumes, can be complex. The best way to manage such complex data is by tailoring EMR solutions for medical specialties in such a way that are able to meet the specific requirements of the practice.

Other than just patient data management, the system should also be capable of generating reports for research, care quality improvement, and keeping an eye on regulatory compliance. Moreover, the data generated by systems is often complicated and difficult for the normal eye to understand. This can pose numerous problems in care delivery and administrative management. However, the best way to deal with this is by the use of reporting tools for analyzing patient outcomes and identifying unique trends in data.

Furthermore, if you’re opting for a virtual care delivery option, then integration with specialized medical devices and equipment to collect and share the data is necessary. Some of the most common integrations that you’ll need are ECG machines, MRI scanners, and other tools and devices. All this can be easily achieved with a custom EMR software for medical specialists, with custom forms, templates that reduce documentation time and increase provider satisfaction.

On top of that, with AI dominating technological advancements, you can also have specialty-specific automation, such as auto-dosing calculators during medications, auto-generated procedure reports with a quick overview, and structured documentation shortcuts to simplify and speed up the documentation process.

These EMR customizations for specialty practices are on the clinical side; here are some administrative customizations that can be implemented in your software. For instance, with intelligent task routing administrative burden can be reduced to a minimum, and it can also be routed in the billing workflows, so that it also gets streamlined. And to simplify automated authorization, you can have automated triggers that can trigger the PA process so that care delivery is not interrupted.

Advanced Data Management & Reporting Capabilities

Specialty practices have to manage large and complex datasets, which include radiology images, pathology slides, genomics reports, and lab sequences. Managing these datasets with a generic EHR can be a mess, and the chances of mismatches are huge. That is why with an EMR for niche medical practices, custom reporting can be made possible for almost all aspects, including outcomes, research, compliance, and specialty metrics.

However, to achieve this, you need to integrate your system with specialty devices like ECG machines, imaging systems, and diagnostic tools, which can be easily done with specialty-specific EMR software.

You can even leverage the power of AI in your system. Let me explain how, for instance, with AI-powered insights for specialty datasets, here are a few specialty-specific examples:

• Oncology: With an AI-powered system, tumor progression trends can be easily mapped.

• Cardiology: Waveform interpretation can be done easily.

• Dermatology: AI-powered systems can help you in real-time image comparison with pinpointing specific differences.

Moreover, with advanced visual dashboards, tracking clinical trends in your clinic can also be easily done.

Enhancing Patient Care & Outcomes

Personalized healthcare technology is where the healthcare industry’s offerings are heading. Coupling this with customized EMR solutions, you actually put the same data you collect from patients to its proper use. For instance, with EMR, you can include data-driven healthcare practices and implement evidence-based treatment protocols for specific conditions. This way, you can deliver personalized care and improve patient adherence to their care plans and journey.

Moreover, with almost instant access to data, both patients and providers facilitate communication with each other. This not only proves to be crucial for collaboration but also serves as a medium to make informed decisions. Some of the most essential features in this include secure messaging, video conferencing and shared patient records.

The EMR software development also gives you enough flexibility to add features that suit your needs and requirements the best. The best example of this can be seen in automated reminders features or drug interaction checks to ensure the right medication, etc.

Ensuring Compliance & Security

Industry regulations and standards with respect to virtual healthcare delivery are often evolving. Furthermore, for specialty practices, it changes more often. In such cases, adhering to industry regulations and standards becomes difficult for many. With EMR customization for specialties, better compliance with industry standards and regulations can be maintained, to ensure patient data safety and privacy is ensured along. Furthermore, it also becomes easier for your practice to easily navigate through the legal landscape of virtual healthcare.

Patient data security and privacy being some of the major concerns of custom EMR software, identifying them and discussing how you will address them with your healthcare software development company is necessary. Complying with some of the regulatory bodies such as HIPAA, GDPR, etc, is necessary.

As a healthcare practice, you need to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive patient data. For all of this, you need to leverage the power of data encryption to ensure the data is not leaked, access control to stop unauthorized access and conducting regular security audits to identify and address the growing security concerns.

Improving Operational Efficiency & Reducing Cost

Customizable EMR has been a trend in the healthcare industry for many reasons, and the impact it has on improving operational efficiency and reducing costs tops the list. You see, streamlining administrative tasks such as billing and coding clearly takes a lot of burden off of the administrative tasks.

With automation, manual interventions are limited, and the entire process, from claims filling to submission, can be automated with the bare minimum intervention. Along with this, by digitizing the entire process, the need for manual data entry at every process is eliminated, and you don’t have to rely on paperwork since everything is done digitally.

Now, take a step back and take note of all the processes where you are using custom EMR software. It will show you all the intricacies of your practice and the loopholes that were financially impacting your practice. However, with EMR customization for specialties you streamline the entire process and fill up the gaps that are crucial for revenue cycle management.

Along with that, reduction in hospital readmissions and emergency visits, allows you to use your resources effectively and reduce the margin of financial losses significantly.

Scalability & Multi-Location Specialty Expansion

With time, your practice is bound to grow, and with custom EMR, adding new providers, new specialties, and new branches of your practice is not much of a hassle as compared to a generic EHR. Furthermore, with a cloud-based architecture, expansion can be easily done.

On top of that, specialty modules can also be added as your practice will diversify its services, and by adopting a unified data model, you can ensure data formats are consistent across all locations, allowing you to oversee your practice functioning effectively on a daily basis.

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