How Important Is Meaningful Use Of Emr?

Meaningful use of emr (electronic medical records) refers to a practice of using the medical records of patients in a rightful manner. American Recovery & Reinvestment Act was passed by the federal government in the year 2009, which includes the term meaningful use of emr. In fact, the act provides for rewarding medical professionals with the financial incentives that make the rightful use of the electronic medical records. A set of rules or criteria was designed in order to judge the medical practitioners as regards the meaningful use.

The recovery act provided for $19.2 billion for modernizing the health care system by promoting and expanding the adoption of health information technology. Incentives were declared for medical professionals for switching from paper medical records to electronic medical records. The whole idea behind meaningful use of emr was to bring about flexibility and transparency as regards patient medical records.

There was strong advocacy for meaningful use emr to ensure in-depth & proper recording of patient information. Quick availability of the patient medical history during emergency and safeguarding the rights of patients as regards the secrecy of their records are some of the important aspects of the criteria. It provides that the information should be available only to the patients, their doctors and other registered medical practitioners under emergency.

Meaningful use of emr also ensures that the information provided in the records is true to the best knowledge of the professional. And that it should not be manipulated under any circumstances. Here, comes the role of information technology in the healthcare system management. New age medical softwares that includes higher end emr systems are designed to meet the growing needs of medical professionals.

Achieving meaningful use of emr is not only helpful for the medical professionals in earning good incentives and reputation but is equally helpful for patients as it ensures minimization of medical errors and timely quality medical service. In other words, meaningful use of electronic medical record keeping is to benefit both the patient and their caregiver. That is the no-nonsense use of the adjective, meaningful.

In fact, meaning use of emr is concerned with fixing up some responsibility on the part of healthcare professionals so as to ensure its proper (or meaningful use). Lack of meaningful use can result into wastage of time, money and difficulties in the achievement of ultimate goals for both physicians as well as patients. The optimum utilization of this intelligent software can be achieved if and only if there is some sense of responsibility in using it, which is nothing but meaningful use of emr.