Electronic Health Records (EHR): Benefits and Advantages

Electronic health records are a small marvel of modern technology. Electronic health records, or EHRs, allow doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to look up their patients' health records on computer systems. Things like a person's medical records and laboratory results are all in a format which is easy to access.

Billing

• Putting health records into an electronic format ensures accuracy when it comes time to bill a patient for services.

Improved Service

• An electronic health record can tell a nurse, doctor or medical professional what pharmaceutical drugs or food items a patient at a hospital may be allergic to, and thus reduce the chances for any mistakes which may reduce a patient's quality of health care.

Patient Convenience

• Electronic health records diminish the need for duplicate tests to be ordered for a patient. Since an EHR makes access to information easy, the need for a patient to repeat a test in order to obtain results gained from a previous test no longer exits.

Privacy

• When health records are in an electronic format as opposed to a paper format, protecting information a patient may consider private becomes an easier task.

Costs

• Electronic health records help medical professionals reduce the costs associated with keeping accurate records of their patients.