Health care quality driven by paperless records

While the path to electronic health records has been rocky, many care facilities are seeing improvements in quality of care and patient service, a much needed boost to the movement.

According to The Star-Ledger, one hospital in New Jersey has seen significant advantages to going paperless with its records. Gary Horan, president and chief executive officer of Trinitas Regional Medical Center, recently spoke with the news source regarding his own facilities adoption of EHRs and efforts to keep up with the Affordable Care Act.

"Safety and quality are the overriding reasons [for EHR adoption]." Horan told the news source.

Horan noted many examples of why the switch to paperless records through conversion services and high-quality management solutions is important. One key factor is the clarity of reports. Physicians are notorious for their poor handwriting – but with EHRs, tests and prescriptions can be ordered electronically, with no room for error caused by a misread report, and uploaded faster than ever for compliance needs. This reduces risk to the patient, expedites testing, and ensures that issues such as drug interaction complications and allergies are avoided.

By switching to paperless records using document management software and the appropriate hardware, hospitals can boost the quality of care, meeting ACA requirements and start leveraging these technologies for a brighter future for health care overall. At Trinitas Regional Medical Center these efforts are already underway, and other facilities across the nation need to keep up in order to continue offering people the services they expect from the industry. By investing in paper conversion services, medical centers can start moving in the right direction immediately with security and compliance assured.

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