The HITECH Act and Meaningful Use requirements have ushered in a new era of health information management that promises to deliver better care quality, greater efficiency and at a lower cost. It’s also putting more pressure on staff to get clinical data into the EHR data fields. As a result, already strained resources are being strained even more. The health data integration dilemma is especially acute when dealing with external data sources, such as clinical labs that often arrive by fax or are made available via portals.
In this new era, data stuck in documents (i.e. paper, PDFs, other unstructured formats) are no longer acceptable. Care providers are now required to get test values into discrete EHR data fields.
To comply with these new requirements, managers are implementing workflows that optimize the use of available staff. However, as with any process, there are always unintended consequences that can create new risks especially when those workflows are not automated. Are your clinical data capture workflows increasing risk? Download our self-assessment to help you pinpoint the areas of risk that your workflows may be creating.
