Introduction

Electronic health records (EHR) have become an integral part of the healthcare system as a pivotal and innovative tool that revolutionizes how health information is stored, retrieved, and managed. EHR systems now digitalize health data from paper-based records into a fully computerized process that can be retrieved and shared in real-time to facilitate patient information management. Meanwhile, the shift from paper-based documents to digital health records overcomes many obstacles in storing, retrieving, and managing patient information, including facilitating care coordination, decreasing mistakes, and optimizing the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare. In the big data era, where all health information can be delivered efficiently, there is no doubt that EHR systems play an increasingly significant role in ensuring accurate and secure management of medical data to provide high-quality care.
Managing patient data efficiently is critical in improving healthcare outcomes and experiences for healthcare providers and their patients. It also simplifies and streamlines back-office administration, freeing up resources such as providers and staff and allowing them to focus on delivering high-quality care. Nowadays, most healthcare providers use EHR solutions to manage patient data. These parts have inherent flaws. The reality is that these solutions have been built as one-size-fits-all technologies to accommodate all the needs arising from diverse healthcare settings such as hospitals, clinics, and practices. However, as we will further explore in this blog, these systems tend to be poorly designed and come with several disadvantages that put patients and providers at a disadvantage in today’s complex digital ecosystem. This blog will explain how custom EHR solutions offer a much-improved way of managing patient data and ultimately facilitate better patient care through improved operational efficiency.

The need for custom EHR solutions

Generic EHR systems, available off the shelf, often do not fit the needs of providers. EHRs, like other off-the-shelf products, come with fixed features and components with no easy or affordable way to customize them. In some healthcare facilities, clinicians operate around an EHR system rather than with it. This makes it less useful and harder to use, but they stick with it rather than seek another option. It can impede the movement and integration of patients and family members or hinder the ability to go online and Skype with a specialist elsewhere. It can limit the interaction with the patient’s health or safety, leading potentially to errors.
The key to those solutions is custom EHR software configured to the organization’s specific challenges and uses instead of plugging it into a standard system design. In addition to the typical templates and workflows that most vendors can offer, a custom EHR can include features that fit your provider’s clinical processes, making it easier for clinicians. These built-for-you EHRs also tend to be better interoperable with other healthcare tools and systems – allowing for a user experience that ultimately delivers the workflow that leads to more efficient performance, less time spent on clerical tasks, and a net increase in patient satisfaction. Custom EHR solutions probably won’t fit into off-the-shelf price structures. Still, the improvements in clinical staff and patient experience will ultimately improve outcomes and make your organization the success you envision.

Key features of custom EHR solutions

Specialized templates and workflows

Custom EHR solutions also offer specialized templates and workflows for different medical specialties, namely, pre-designed data fields, forms, and problem lists specific to the provider’s medical specialty. This is incredibly useful as a podiatrist wouldn’t need the same data fields as an OB/GYN. Custom templates enable the provider to document more quickly and correctly, eliminating the need for extensive data entry and those annoying shifts in the system. This also saves time and means that the patient’s data is captured more readily and clinically.

Interoperability with other healthcare systems

Custom EHR solutions enable effective interoperability by smoothly integrating other healthcare network systems, such as telemedicine and billing software. This way, information about a patient can easily flow between various departments and systems, reducing the chance of information gaps in communication between departments. Custom EHR solutions allow various parts of the healthcare network to communicate effectively, minimizing administrative overheads and improving care coordination.

User-friendly interface

An interface designed for a custom EHR out of the gate for their users’ needs to understand what they’re looking at and how to help those suffering from hypertension. Work-flows can be optimized, laboratory and imaging results can be more efficiently incorporated into the records, and data points can be entered, accessed, and collected more easily and standardized. If an EHR interface can be designed well – or at least less aggressively – clinician burnout diminishes, and clinician satisfaction increases. Custom EHRs can ensure an intuitive interface that’s easy to navigate, thereby decreasing the clinicians’ burden of using overly complex and unwieldy computer systems. They can reduce the need for numerous specialized programs and systems because the desired data will be accessible and easily customizable through the EHR alone. With customization, healthcare workers will have more time to focus on patient care and less time to struggle to understand a new software program.

Data accessibility and security

Real-time data access for healthcare providers

While their use is currently restricted by slow and unreliable data flares, a custom EHR provider guarantees just-in-time access to data, for example, enabling a care provider to pull up patient labs, images, or histories in seconds rather than minutes or hours. With just-in-time EHR information, healthcare providers can access accurate and current information at their fingertips, which can be essential to making correct and timely decisions. This affordance has the overarching benefits of accelerating diagnosis and treatment and reducing medical errors. Furthermore, it supports care coordination across larger multidisciplinary teams.

Patient access to health records

EHRs and personal health records allow patients to see their previous medical history at a glance. They can also see their test results, track a treatment plan, and make appointments, increasing their sense of autonomy in their care. Allowing patients to view and make sense of their medical data can improve their overall health engagement. It can enable them to monitor their regimens better and change them where appropriate – or even insist that health providers follow the regimen. Moreover, having easy access to health records contributes to a sense of openness and honesty between patients and professionals.

Enhanced security measures

These custom EHR solutions include stringent protections that ensure that information stays private while meeting industry-standard compliances, including HIPAA, GDPR, and HITCH regulations. By implementing strong encryption protocols, secure user authentication, and regular security audits, data is protected from unauthorized uses or breaches, and patient information is kept secure. Custom EHR solutions also make it possible to provide granular controls to ensure data is available only to those who are authorized to see it. Finally, building strong data security measures protects patient privacy and reduces the risk of fines and litigation over security compliance failures.

Improved clinical decision support

Custom EHRs provide valuable insight for better clinical decision-making by embedding cutting-edge decision-support tools within the platform, enabling healthcare providers to receive actionable, evidence-based guidance while simultaneously performing the charting itself. For example, a custom EHR can be built to help providers with specialty-specific recommendations, a ‘watchdog’ for potential drug interactions, or a trigger for a stat max test for patients with this type of symptom in their past medical history. This type of support helps streamline clinical efficiency while elevating the care provided by lowering the risk of error and steering providers toward best care practices.
These reminders go hand in hand with AI-based early alerts or notifications, which can help outpace human memory by bringing clinically relevant information to providers’ attention. These systems can review patient data, determine which patients are at risk of deterioration or complications, and send emergency notifications to providers if the electronic medical record detects life-or-death deterioration, such as declining vital signs. Systems within custom EHRs can also remind providers of other important periods (e.g., long overdue screenings, vaccinations, or medication adjustments) to improve chronic disease management (an essential factor in bridging the staggering quality inequality between haves and have-nots) and provide patients with more attentive, anticipatory care. By embedding intelligent insights directly in the provider workflow, custom EHRs help physicians extend the limits of human cognitive abilities.

Scalability and flexibility

An advantage of patient-tailored EHRs is that they are scalable. Healthcare organizations can grow as their systems expand. As long as practices add more doctors or take on new specialties, the EHR could be easily scaled to accommodate more users, additional data storage needs, and an expanded set of functionalities in use. Organizations that can scale without incurring new investments in new systems could continue to manage their patients’ data efficiently and free up time and resources that would otherwise be spent entirely replacing their EHR solutions. Adding new functionalities or integrating other technologies could also help the EHR remain a useful tool for controlling patients’ information as an organization grows vis-à-vis the complexity of its system. Another critical aspect of custom EHRs is agility. These solutions can accommodate changing regulations and evolving healthcare needs. The healthcare industry is an ever-changing environment. New laws and compliance requirements change how we approach care delivery every year. New technologies emerge, and existing ones evolve. Custom EHRs can be adapted to meet these changes quickly, ensuring continued compliance with regulations (e.g., HIPAA and GDPR) and effective patient data management. Changing rules notwithstanding, the healthcare space changes due to new organizational strategies. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the adaptation of existing healthcare systems to adopt new modes of care, such as telehealth. The success of initiatives such as the shift to value-based care models is attributed mainly to the agility afforded by EHRs in reconfiguring workflows.

Cost and time efficiency

Employing custom EHR solutions makes life much easier for healthcare institutions because it frees up some of the immense administrative burden and streamlines operations. Because such systems can be written to automate routine tasks such as filling in patient information, scheduling appointments, submitting bills to insurance, and much more, much of the time that would be spent on these mundane tasks is freed up to allow physicians and other providers to focus more of their time on patient care, rather than administrative tasks. Instead of trying to fit a practice’s work-flow into a generic complex software system, in many cases a custom EHR would fit those work-flows, which would save time trying to learn to use the system, and be more efficient. The result of this on staff and company performance is that they could manage their time better, ultimately leading to increased productivity and improving operations across the board.
But in the long term? The bottom line could be significant, both operationally and clinically. Operationally, EHR efficiency gains and reduced costs associated with improved patient outcomes can benefit patients, healthcare providers, and payors alike. For instance, with automated clinical workflow and interoperability, the most up-to-date patient information can always be available at a doctor’s fingertips. This prevents misdiagnosis and ensures a more streamlined clinician workflow. Overall, process efficiency gains can lead to fewer unnecessary appointments, fewer redundant tests, and fewer patient readmissions, all of which reduce overall costs. Clinically, improved patient outcomes – made possible by timely access to more reliable information and well-designed clinical decision support – become cost-saving strategies. For example, healthier patients require less expensive care over time. If you invest in a custom EHR today, it’s likely to pay off in lower future healthcare costs.

Conclusion

Therefore, custom EHR systems are a paradigm shift away from the one-size-fits-all solution of commercial off-the-shelf EHRs and offer numerous advantages in data management, streamlining the healthcare delivery workflows and increasing efficiency and effectiveness. Above all, its relevancy and impact are apparent in the ability to satisfy the unique requirements of every healthcare organization. In summary, having a custom EHR solution at your disposal will bring about significant cost savings and resource allocation optimization and greatly enhance customer service by empowering healthcare providers, simplifying the process of acquiring and managing patient data, and consequently increasing patient satisfaction.