Use of EMRs across Canada by primary care physicians has grown over the past decade, from 37 per cent in 2009 to 85 per cent in 2017. While basic use of EMRs involves electronic entry and retrieval of patient notes and generating prescriptions, more advanced use includes:
- sending electronic referrals to specialists;
- enabling automated alerts or warnings to support safe prescribing — such as drug or drug/dose interactions;
- receiving discharge summaries for patients returning home from hospital care, and;
- use of analytic or reporting functions on practice EMR data to understand patients who may be due for follow-up care or treatment.
One of the more interesting insights from the 2018 Canadian Physician Survey looks at the relationship between use of multiple EMR functionalities and perceived practice efficiency. The study found that 92 per cent of physicians who use six to nine functionalities stated that they ‘provide more efficient health care with electronic records,’ whereas only 67 per cent of physicians who use one to two EMR functionalities agreed. The full list of functionalities is available in the study report.
This suggests that coordinated strategies that enable primary care physicians in Canada to adopt and integrate advanced EMR functionalities may increase practice efficiency. This post is the first of a two-part series and the second explores how physician usage of EMRs evolve as they grow beyond their initial first couple of years.
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