Electronic records are a government mandate:
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act also includes financial incentives for healthcare providers who prove meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR). EHR is not only a more comprehensive patient history than EMR, the latter of which contains a patient’s medical history from just one practice, but also the end-goal of the federal mandate. “Meaningful use” of EHR, as defined by HealthIT.gov, consists of using digital medical and health records to achieve the following:
Improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities
Engage patients and family
Improve care coordination, and population and public health
Maintain privacy and security of patient health information
Penalties also exist for non-compliance. EP’s who haven’t implemented EMR/EHR systems and demonstrated their meaningful use by 2015 will experience a 1% reduction in Medicare reimbursements, and rates of reduction will likely rise annually thereafter.
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