The Digital Transformation of Healthcare: Functional Requirements for Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

Electronic health records (EHRs) have become the digital backbone of healthcare operations and patient care. As medical practices increasingly shift from paper charts to EHR systems, understanding the key features and functional requirements is essential for optimal adoption and utilization. 

This comprehensive guide takes a quick look at the core purposes of EHRs, the functionality required for critical workflows, necessary capabilities for robust data management, tools to enable personalized care, interoperability features for health care information exchange, technical infrastructure needs, and more.

Healthcare is undergoing a digital revolution.

Electronic health records (EHRs) now play a central role in this transformation by modernizing clinical and administrative tasks. However, simply digitizing paper records is not enough. To truly optimize patient care and healthcare delivery, EHR systems must provide a wide range of capabilities.

At their core, EHRs strive to:

• Enhance coordination of care across health care providers, departments, and care settings
• Give clinicians quick access to vital information to support evidence-based decision making
• Engage patients as partners in care through patient portals and access to records
• Enable a transition from episodic treatment to preventative care through analysis of population health trends
• Increase productivity across healthcare organizations from streamlining documentation to automating billing

To deliver on these promises, EHR systems must meet certain functional requirements

Thoughtful analysis of clinical workflows and data needs is imperative during selection and implementation. This prevents adopting software that merely checks the EHR box without truly transforming care delivery.

While each healthcare provider has unique requirements, certain capabilities are universally vital.

Streamlining Clinical Workflows with Computerized Order Entry, Documentation Tools

Optimizing clinical workflows is a primary goal of EHR implementations. Clinicians need to document, order, prescribe, and coordinate care seamlessly.

• Structured data entry replaces cumbersome narrative notes
• Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) eliminates paper orders with electronic routing and tracking
• E-prescribing reduces errors and improves pharmacy workflows
• Templates, shortcuts, and voice recognition improve documentation efficiency

Clinical decision support (CDS) integrates evidence-based guidelines directly into order sets and workflows. Data analytics on patient trends and population health enable prevention and management of chronic diseases. In these ways, EHRs enhance clinical practice at the point of care.

Capabilities like CPOE and structured documentation are considered so vital that US federal requirements mandate them. For EHR systems to qualify for financial incentives under Medicare/Medicaid programs, they must contain these baseline functionalities. Adoption of mature EHR technologies has therefore become critical for care providers.

Managing Patient Data: The Healthcare Information Backbone

At their most basic level, EHRs must provide a centralized and holistic view of the patient record. This includes demographic details, diagnoses, medications, allergies, immunizations, procedures, and results. Longitudinal tracking of this data enables informed clinical decision making over time. Beyond just digitizing paper charts, EHRs must allow flexible yet structured data entry and coding.

• Problem lists offer an overview of patient health issues with coding for complexity.
• Computerized provider order entry relies on standardized catalogs of orderable items.
• Likewise, e-prescribing requires drug catalogs and RxNorm coding for medications.

Meaningful use of structured data ensures quality reporting and health information exchange between EHR systems.

Storage of medical images alongside textual records provides comprehensive health history within one platform. Integrated practice management tools enable patient scheduling. EHR analytics generate reports on population health trends. This kind of data backbone provides ample support for clinical care, administration, billing, and financial operations.

Engaging Patients with Portals, Education, Remote Care

Transitioning to EHRs provides immense opportunities for engaging patients in care. 

Patient portals connected to the EHR allow various self-service functions. Patients can review visit notes, access test results, message providers, request prescription refills, and schedule appointments. Portals can integrate patient-generated health data from wearables and home monitoring devices.

Customized patient education resources within the EHR portal enhance understanding of conditions. Video visit capabilities enable telehealth with remote providers. Such tools activate patients as partners in managing healthcare. They also improve access and convenience - keydrivers of patient satisfaction.

However, development of patient-centric functionalities lags behind those for clinicians. EHR vendors must prioritize usability, personalization and augmentation of care through mHealth integration. Healthcare organizations selecting EHR systems should evaluate vendor commitment to optimizing the patient experience.

Exchanging Information Seamlessly via Interoperability Standards

In today's complex healthcare ecosystem, providers must seamlessly exchange patient information across various technologies. Structured data capture is foundational for this interoperability.

Standard clinical terminologies enable normalized meaning for diagnoses, medications, tests and procedures. Widely adopted messaging protocols also enable systems to share patient data.

Some key interoperability standards used in EHR systems include:

Standard	Purpose
SNOMED CT	Clinical terminology
ICD	Diagnosis codes
LOINC	Lab test codes
RxNorm	Medication terminology
HL7	Health data exchange
DICOM	Medical imaging
FHIR	API data access

Leading EHR solutions certify compatibility with such standards annually. Platform interoperability allows coordinated workflows across departmental systems. Health information exchanges offer community-wide sharing of data between competing health systems.

Despite progress, interoperability remains an evolving need. Variability in EHR implementation and outdated legacy systems pose challenges. 

But the ability to compile complete health records across technologies is essential to fully coordinate care. Evaluating integration capabilities must be central during EHR selection and implementation planning.

Securing Data Integrity with Robust Infrastructure

EHR systems house incredibly sensitive personal health information. Developing a robust technical infrastructure with strong cybersecurity protocols is an absolute necessity. 

EHR servers must be scaled to accommodate storage and access demands securely. Role-based access controls limit data visibility. End-to-end data encryption protects records in transit and at rest.

As privileged data repositories, EHR systems must maintain meticulous audit logs to identify breaches. They must comply with regulations like HIPAA that govern protected health information. With data integrity and privacy at stake, organizations cannot afford to cut corners on infrastructure investments when implementing EHRs.

This also means planning for disaster recovery and continuity of operations. As EHR systems increasingly become 24/7 hubs of care coordination and delivery, downtime can severely impact patient outcomes. Therefore, redundancy, failover capabilities and archival backups are essential.

The Road Ahead: Leveraging EHRs to Transform Care

This examination of EHR functional requirements only scratches the surface of their capabilities. While optimizing workflows, engaging patients, enabling data exchange, and securing infrastructure provide a foundation, realizing the full potential of EHRs remains an ongoing journey.

As the digital backbone underpinning healthcare delivery, EHRs must continuously evolve to meet emerging needs. Integrating new data sources, powering telehealth, and enabling care beyond hospital walls are imperatives. 

Ultimately, EHRs can shift healthcare from reactive treatment to proactive lifelong health management. But this requires maximizing their interoperability and functionality at every step.

For practices aiming to transform care experiences for both patients and providers, purpose-built solutions like Calysta EMR provide a comprehensive platform. From clinical workflows to patient engagement and secure data exchange, Calysta offers the capabilities needed to digitally transform a practice.

Key features include:

• Optimized workflows for documentation, ordering, e-prescribing, billing and more
• Patient portals for self-service, engagement, and data sharing
• Interoperability for connecting with labs, pharmacies, hospitals and exchanges
• Robust security protocols to safeguard confidential patient data

As a cloud-based solution designed specifically for aesthetic practices, Calysta can act as an all-in-one command center for practice management. It offers the flexibility to adapt to emerging needs and regulations.