Many pediatric EHR functions are still far-fetched for many pediatric practices. Selecting a right kind of Pediatric EHR is relatively challenging as most of the Electronic Health Record software are built keeping an adult patient in mind. The EHR software industry has not emphasized functions such as support for neonatal medicine, ensuring adolescent confidentiality, and tracking growth development that are equally important in pediatric medicine.
The pediatricians provide diverse services in various aspects of health issues which range from immunizations, developmental disorders, treatment for acute and chronic conditions to ADHD evaluation. They provide comprehensive and specialized care and treatment from infancy to adolescence.
The basic Pediatric EHR workflow should be:
- The customizable pediatric care templates should consist of – well child
- TB risk assessment
- Sick visit
- ADHD evaluation
- Audiometry
- Developmental testing
- Different drug administration
- Age-specific immunization records and be able to track them, development screenings, associated order sets
- Supporting immunization registry interface, nationwide
- Education material (pediatric specific)
- Sibling management – availability of sibling charts for swift diagnosis and treatment plan
- CDC and WHO growth chart templates
Some challenges faced by Pediatric EHR
Electronic health records have now become common in patient care. But many still believe that EHR usability do contribute in some way to medical errors. For instance, children’s weight affects the dose of medication received, which may differ from the dose typically administered to a full-grown adult. Another example is, it is necessary to ensure that children are within normal ranges when it comes to correctly tracking pediatric patients’ height, weight and other vital indicators.
Other potential problem is the child of divorced parents. How to retrieve the child’s data, in which the mother and father have different names. This unique issue is not faced in adult system. Here the requirements for inpatient and outpatient settings may differ.
As pediatricians have to deal with large volume, quick turn-over, or a last minute appointment, the software should be capable of charting multiple conditions at the same time.
Other barrier is to be aware of the need to protect highly-sensitive child information, and provide reports to schools and other institutions. There should be capability to track immunization records, and send patient reminders and other correspondence automatically.
There is a need to focus on procedures that include immunizations and medication administration. The challenges of implementing these functionalities have to be identified and evaluated. The process is slow and time is a challenge, but these problems are addressed positively by EHR vendors. The iPatientCare Pediatric EHR is incorporated in a way that is more useful for the practice, and also provides more structured data.
Some features of using iPatientCare EHR for Pediatrician:
- Multiple methods of data entry – voice and handwriting recognition, click and point.
- Complete scheduling management and health reminders
- e-prescription and lab automation
- iPhone and iPad compatible
- Vitals and laboratory result that are organized by age and gender
- Sick and well child visit workflow
- Immunization auto coder and tracker
- Track clinical quality measures
- Diagnostic and treatment for children with Down Syndrome
- Standard forms, such as school physicals should be printable
- Scalable – single practice to multiple location practice
- Seamless communication between practice, labs, radiology, pharmacies and referring providers/specialists
- HIPAA and ICD-10 compliant
- Meaningful Use certified, HL-7 interfacing
Some features of using iPatientCare Pediatric EHR:
- iPatientCare brings latest technology to your practice by working with variety of devices – desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones
- Helps alert staff about patient health info, and decrease liability
- Also keeps staff aware of maintaining patient health, drug interactions, timely updates, allergy alerts and EHR notifications
- After data entry, there is a fast retrieval by using intuitive search functionality that assists your practice to search across the entire patient database based on specific requests
- It is a cloud-based technology, therefore there is an easy access from any location via internet
- There is a seamless communication with other medical facilities, whenever data needs to be shared with a pharmacy, other providers/specialists, pharmacy, or a laboratory
- There is also scanning and attaching services available, that are cost effective and time-saving
Also your practice can have customized organization-wide practice management solutions along with electronic medical records for charting and coding specialty-specific encounters such as ADHD, adolescent and child visits. Some of the benefits related to this are:
- Family profiles and group scheduling are linked
- Vital Sign measurements include both US type and Metric style
- Alerts are given for pediatric dosing and drug contraindication
- Also available are CDC and WHO growth chart format with developmental milestones
- Full information on child and adolescent psychiatry is available
- Complete ADHD Assessment and Diagnosis
- Complete immunization scheduling, tracking and registries
- Templates for Well and sick child visits
The providers sometimes describe the EHRs as complex and cumbersome to use. The software should be flexible enough to support and capture health summaries for secondary use, such as school forms, athletic forms etc. Medication ordering is also viewed as complicated task.
The pediatric EHR prescribing system requires assistance in selecting appropriate dose and dispensing amounts given, according to the specification of height and weight. A child’s changing physiology and maturity is the key functionality, as it is the incorporation of pediatric specific norms and growth charts into the EHR. There should be assurance of adequate, on-target growth and development.
How to choose a Pediatric EHR vendor that fulfills all your practice’s needs?
Must focus on the software that is designed specific for your practice. It should be customized to deal with the unique characteristics for treating your patients in a primary care setting. The pediatric EHR should ideally be able to receive and analyze the large amounts of data from different diagnostic equipment or software; as pediatricians need to draw data from multiple specialists when there is a long-term relationship with the patients.
Most of the vendors provide with lucrative features and offers, but half of them are still able to satisfy the practice’s needs. It is a challenge to find and select suitable pediatric EHR for your practice. The most important thing that a practice should keep in mind is that, there should be unlimited support and assistance from the vendor.
Their team should be fully committed in streamlining the workflow and enhancing the performance and practice outcomes. For new services and products there should be training sessions. For instance, there should be training programs on how to design reports and access analytics for the financial health, or personalized services. This helps the practice staff to review the communication and collaboration processes.
There should be commitment to help all the providers with single or multiple practices to capture the highest return on investment. Comprehensive training and support that includes personalized instructions and/or interactive training options should be available. The remote support team must be connected to client care team, offering assistance at any time, and also assist in overcoming project challenges and design training protocols based on the practice’s requirements. This software provides cost-effective solutions for pediatric specialty, for any size of practice.
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