For health care workers, it has meant very quickly finding a way to connect with patients virtually whenever possible for the sake of everyone’ safety — the doctor’s, the patient’s, and their families. I’m proud that Infoway is playing a role in making that happen through its Electronic Medical Record (EMR)-Virtual Care Investment Program.
The program is working with both PrescribeIT® vendor partners and other EMRs to provide financial support to vendors to rapidly integrate or scale existing virtual care technologies into their systems. Another change brought about by COVID-19 is compressed timelines. While the ability to integrate virtual care into practices was already a goal many were aspiring to, as it increases access to care, progress was slow for a variety of reasons. Now these hurdles have disappeared, and delays in adoption are no longer an option.
While speed is of the essence, it’s also important to integrate virtual care into practices in a way that make sense — and that’s by integrating it into a physician’s existing EMR wherever possible. Offering EMR integration will benefit physicians and patients alike. For patients, it will mean better continuity of care, as they will be able to continue to see their own doctors who will have access to their medical history. For physicians it will mean keeping the patient journey whole by layering new functionality into their existing workflow so that virtual visits, patient history, and electronic prescribing through PrescribeIT® is all available in one place.
PrescribeIT® has already reached agreements with a number of EMR vendors who are working to quickly integrate and scale virtual visit functionality into their solutions. As physicians and other health care workers risk their lives to provide us with care, it’s important we all do our part by physically distancing whenever possible. And for Infoway, this means helping to expand the availability of virtual care offerings.
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