Question

What is the difference between electronic health records (EHR) and electronic medical records (EMR)? What are the advantages and disadvantages of EHR? How do electronic records improve workflow processes and reduce costs? Explain. Cite at least one reference in your response.

Answer 1

Answer: There are various difference between EHR and EMR, but the most significant difference is that the electronic medical records is a kind of patient's chart which is digitaly represented. The EMR can be acess only by the single practice and mainly used for the treatment and diagnosis. It can not be shared with the pharmacies or hospital etc. Whereas, the EHR that is electronic health records are usually used for saving the Information of the patient's medical history and can be shared with the third parties such as insurance companies for the reimbursement.

The advantages of EHR are:

• It saves time and it removes the hurdle of paper work.
• It reduces burnout among healthcare professionals.
• It has huge data storage space.
• Information can be transferred to the concerned healthcare professionals.

The disadvantages are:

• It may lead to privacy violation.
• Can be easily hacked.
• Sometimes if data are not backed up, may cause loss of all information.

The electronic healthcare record system store huge number of data and Information. This reduces the burden of paper work and improves the efficiency of the workflow. All the Information regarding the patient's medical history, procedures etc can be directly accessed and the patient need not to provide all the details on every visit. The healthcare professional can directly have the records to check the patient's health status.