Barack Obama’s Push For Digital Healthcare

Improved and affordable healthcare is on many American’s minds these days. So it is with our new president, Barack Obama. President Obama’s health care plan includes improvements to the existing medical infrastructure to bring all medical facilities up to speed with digital healthcare. There are many reasons why moving to digital healthcare is a cost effective and efficient way of improving healthcare in this country.

Because President Obama would like to expand health coverage to more people, he also understands that it will take greater modernization of current medical systems in order to bring them up to speed to handle the increased capacity. In keeping with the idea of bringing digital healthcare to the forefront, Dicom Solutions will begin to offer EMR, or electronic medical records. Medical facilities will soon be required to use digital patient records, saving the cost of paper, printing and associated costs of paper recordkeeping.

Paperless practices, in addition to enjoying the cost savings of electronic medical records, also benefit from increased security. With digital records, there are no loose papers that can get lost or misfiled. Software systems used for recording patient data also help to reduce transcription error in recording that information, with the benefit of better patient care in a digital environment. Tracking is also built into a digital records system, because people using the system have to log in, leaving a trail, as well as a date to verify when information was entered and by whom. Prescription orders as well as procedure orders can all be placed online, with a benefit to accuracy and another way that patient care is improved.

If a patient’s records are all located in one digital file, then every doctor who sees that patient will have access to that information. In this way, digital records offer another check to prevent test duplication, and it is also easier to have all test results in one common place so that all health care providers have access to the information, making for more accurate records and better diagnostic tools for practitioners to use.

Digital communications also helps to save money and improve the speed of information transfer. Because all personnel are connected via email, there are tremendous savings in costs as well as time spent in routine procedures such as scheduling referrals.

Digital images are another way that electronic medical records can be used to save money. These can be sent securely online, and stored in small servers, saving on storage and materials costs.

For all these reasons, President Obama is pushing for digital healthcare. Now is a great time for hospitals and clinics to begin making the switch to electronic medical records. Dicom Solutions has software packages that can help ease the transition and improve your medical office’s workflow.