Custom EHR Software Development: Patient Care Features – Care Collaboration, Patient Empowerment & Patient Care

Everything in the healthcare industry today revolves around Electronic Health Records. Over the years, recognizing the growing dependency on these electronic patient records, many healthcare practices have made a swift shift to custom EHR software systems.

Though practices have only implemented it as an effort to simplify their patient data management practice, the benefit it came bearing seemed revolutionary for their practice. For instance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, approximately 45% of patients have said that the introduction of EHRs have improved their quality of care. While most of them have remained neutral in care quality, only 6% reported a decline in quality of care.

Having said that, custom EHR software development is also used for addressing one of the major problems in the current healthcare landscape of medical errors. Did you know, medical errors cost the healthcare industry almost $20 billion per year?

With a custom EHR system, medical errors can be minimized, if not completely eliminated. Furthermore, in contrast to the off-the-shelf EHR solutions, with custom EHR software development you can not only enhance better care collaboration practices, but also empower patients to proactively participate in their care journey, improving the overall care delivery process.

But how can a custom EHR revolutionize healthcare practices and improve patient care practices?

Well, let’s find that in the blog below, and without further ado, let’s get started!

What is Custom EHR Software & Why it Matters for Patient Care?

Starting with the basics, let’s first understand what exactly is a custom EHR software. So, a custom EHR software is basically a specially curated and designed digital software system to meet the unique needs and requirements of a healthcare organization.

With a custom EHR software development approach, an organization’s specific workflows, processes, and procedures can easily be addressed, which is typically hard to do with off-the-shelf EHR software readily available in the market.

By aligning your custom healthcare software system—in this case EHR system—with the unique clinical and administrative workflows of your practice, you directly or indirectly streamline your practice processes to achieve the ultimate goal, which is to improve patient health outcomes.

However, there are several intricacies in this, which includes tailoring the software to meet the specific needs of healthcare providers. Equipping the software with patient-provider communication tools, real-time patient monitoring facets, and bringing the entire care team on the same page with collaborative care EHR features are some of the many such intricacies.

And last but not least, during the development phase, the focus of your EHR developers should also be on establishing seamless integration with existing workflows and other disparate healthcare systems. Since the care delivery process is highly collaborative, patient-driven healthcare with EHR can only be possible with such integrations.

Enhancing Collaboration in Care with Custom EHR Systems

As discussed, the role of care collaboration in the delivery of optimum and quality care, here are the collaborative care EHR features that help you in improving patient care.

1. Improved Communication Between Care Teams: Miscommunication can cause a lot of confusion in the care team, which can lead to repetitive tests, medication errors, etc. That is why, for streamlining patient communication with EHR, features like real-time automated updates, secure messaging, and shared patient records can improve communication between care team members. Here, by making EHR accessible for patients, they can also proactively participate in their care activity, which leads to making informed care decisions.

2. Coordinated Care for Complex Cases: Every patient is different and copes with their health conditions in a very different way. This is especially true in the care of patients who have chronic conditions. In such care, coordination care becomes crucial, and specialists require the curation of personalized patient care plans. Only then can the desired results be gained. In doing this, tools like patient-centered data analytics tools come in handy and help in improving patient outcomes with EHR.

3. Incorporating Patient Data in the Collaboration Process: Furthermore, with custom EHR software development, you can create a centralized patient health records platform that allows your providers to be on the same page. This way, they can retrieve all the required patient health information from their health history, lab results, ongoing or past treatment plans, etc., which improves the decision-making process leading to better treatment outcomes.

Patient Empowerment: How Custom EHRs Give Patients More Control Over Their Health

As a healthcare provider, you probably know the role patients play in their care journey. Their proactive involvement can not only lead to better adherence but can also speed up the recovery process. That is why you should have a patient-centered EHR design with a patient-friendly EHR interface that will empower them in their health journey. Here are some ways in which you can do it:

1. Access to Personal Health Records: With a customizable EHR patient portal, you can create an accessible EHR for patients. They can securely access their health information at any time and from anywhere directly from the software. It empowers them to proactively participate in their care delivery and understand their health condition in a much better way.

2. Empowering Patients in Decision Making: By making EHR accessible for patients and using collaborative care EHR features, you actually allow patients to take control of their health. Furthermore, by streamlining patient communication with EHR, you bring the entire care team on the same page, allowing them to take part in decision-making about their health. Doing so will not only enable informed decision-making but also make medication management easy, further improving patient adherence and ultimately helping in deriving the desired health outcomes.

3. Increased Transparency: By automating and streamlining patient communication with EHR, all the care team members are brought on the same page and working towards the same goal. This increases transparency in the care delivery process, and everybody gets a clear idea about the diagnosis process while opening more options to explore for treatment. This not only helps in process tracking but also helps in identifying which treatment plan works best for the patient to get optimum results.

Real-time Data & Analytics: Supporting Proactive Patient Care

In traditional care settings, access to real-time patient data is often absent. While it plays a crucial role in supporting proactive patient care activities, its analytics can make a huge difference in getting the desired results. However, remote patient monitoring with EHR coupled with patient-centered data analytics features can be leveraged to close the gap and provide better treatment. Here are some of the exclusive features of this feature in custom EHR software:

1. Data-driven Insights for Healthcare Providers: While building your own EHR software you will have to deal with almost all types of patient health information. Here, you can opt for built-in analytics features that help your healthcare providers anticipate or identify potential health issues, which can be crucial in early intervention and providing effective preventive care.

2. Patient Monitoring and Alerts: As said earlier, remote patient monitoring with EHR gives you almost instant access to patient health vitals. This marginal improvement in vital tracking helps clinicians monitor patient progress much better and make timely decisions to prevent any major mishaps. Furthermore, by integrating notification and alert features, you further bridge the gap, and the patient care activity is enhanced significantly.

3. Predictive Analytics for Better Health Outcomes: Your vitals reveal everything about your health. Moreover, access to such vitals over a particular timeframe can give away patterns and trends in patient health. Though analyzing them can be a time-consuming process, with custom EHR software features like predictive analytics, predicting potential future health risks can be identified almost instantly. This allows for planning better preventive care strategies to improve patient health outcomes.

Enhancing Patient Care with Customizable EHR Features

To improve patient outcomes with EHR, all the collaborative care EHR features come into action. However, one of the major factors that is often overlooked is patient experience. That is why keen attention must be paid to enhancing the patient experience with EHR. Here are some of the customizable EHR features that contribute to enhancing patient care along with patient experience:

1. Tailored Treatment Plans: One of the major benefits of using custom EHR software is the ability to create customized treatment plans. By allowing you to create individualized treatment plans, the patients not only feel that they are valued, but they also contribute to enhanced adherence, active participation, and better health outcomes.

2. Integration with Wearables and IoT Devices: Collecting patient health vitals virtually can be a tiresome process for patients. However, by integrating your custom EHR with wearables and IoT devices, monitoring patient health becomes much easier and more effective. This not only helps providers in enhancing patient care but also leads to a better patient healthcare experience with an increased satisfaction rate.

3. Streamlined Workflow for Better Care Delivery: A study suggests that providers spent almost 34% of their time on manual documentation on average. This takes away their attention from care activities; however, with automation features for routine tasks, workflow is streamlined, and the focus is shifted from documentation to care delivery. This can play a huge role in enhancing patient care.

Security & Compliance: Safeguarding Patient Data in Custom EHR Solutions

Last but not least, in the digital healthcare landscape everything comes down to security and compliances to safeguard patient data. Though these features of custom EHR software may not directly impact patient care activities, it indeed plays a vital role in curating right care delivery.

1. Data Protection Features: With the implementation of robust APIs, encryptions, and role-based access control features, the custom EHR software can ensure the privacy and security and privacy of sensitive patient data. However, to add another layer of security, you can conduct audit trails to identify and address gaps in security beforehand.

2. Compliance with Healthcare Regulations: To gain the trust of your patients in your practice and healthcare, you need to build your custom EHR software in compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, HITECH Act, etc. This can also be used to help you easily navigate through the legal and other risks.

3. Regular Updates and Security Enhancements: With the ever-changing nature of the healthcare technological landscape, you need to be updated with the latest developments and continuously update the system to neutralize new security threats as well as compliance requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions