Ah, fall, the season of change. Leaves turn from green to colorful oranges, yellows, and reds. The temperature drops until it is perfectly cool and brisk. And a new gentle breeze rustles through the autumn air.
Though we love change, we must also recognize some things should stay as they are. We’re talking about your practice’s #1 most critical asset: your patients’ history.
Your patients’ history is a critical consideration in monitoring health changes and making informed decisions on potential next steps in treatment. Overlooking medical history can lead to mistakes in medications, treatments, and plans.
Needless to say, we need our patients’ historical data to be precise and organized for optimal and accurate medical care. And we NEVER want that history to change! Patient history should be inflexible, immutable, and fixed in the ground like a sturdy old oak tree. It should never stray from the truth that it is. So why are medical clinics across the country suffering from inaccurate patient history?
Your Patient History is Vulnerable. There are two primary reasons why.
Problem #1: Inaccurate Data Goes In
Inaccurate patient history often occurs when there are cracks in communication. In the chain of transferring information—the patient tells the doctor who relays to a scribe what to write— instances of dropped communication are inevitable.
At any point, information could be lost or misconstrued.
Whether it be forgetting details, misremembering the sequence of events and timeframes, or deriving false memories, patients don’t always convey their history correctly. If uncaught immediately, medical staff inputs that erroneous information, storing it permanently in the EHR.
Doctors are not invulnerable to mistakes, either. They can mishear or misunderstand their patients and input inaccurate information, too. Scribes can also input inaccurate data, whether because of mishearing the doctor or even simple mistyping.
Problem #2: Inaccurate Data Comes Out
You’d hope when a medical worker looks at such faulty data, they could catch the mistakes. But the fact is, the medical clinic is such a busy environment that physicians usually resort to trusting the data in front of them and moving on, making medical decisions and suggestions based on the history present in the EHR.
Consequently, one imprecise data point potentially breeds exponential mistakes.
But there is a solution.
Patient History Protection Guaranteed!
Ultimately, no software will catch your mistakes for you. Avoiding potentially costly patient history errors comes down to manual fact checks and vigilant medical staff.
However, there is a software that organizes your entire patient history and presents it concisely so that catching mistakes becomes easy and ensuring correct future data entry is seamless.
It’s called DHRpro.
DHRpro presents everything you need and only what you need right before your eyes! For the first time, an entire patient history is displayed on a fully customizable dashboard with all the information no more than a single click away. See clinical and financial data, medications, diagnostics, and imaging–-all in a historical context in an easy-to-follow longitudinal format.
When everything you need is in context on a single screen, patterns emerge rapidly and gaps are easily closed. When an erroneous data point comes your way, you’ll quickly be able to spot and correct it. For doctors, that means complete control over their patients’ medical history, and it gives billers, that means a firm grasp over a patient’s financial history.
Yes, we love fall, but as the leaves turn colors and parachute to the floor, your patient history should not sway in the winds of innacuracy. Patient history must remain the sturdy marker guiding our future clinical decisions. Untouched. Unchanged. Always accurate.
For something as permanent and pertinent as your patient history, don’t you think a small investment to protect that information is an obvious choice?
