Want to Reduce Medical Errors? It May Be Time to Upgrade Your EHR
Nextech Systems
Nextech improves the performance of specialty practices with innovative solutions that drive efficiency and fuel growth.
Medical errors can have far-reaching consequences for patients and providers. Each year, medical errors cost the American healthcare system over $20 billion. Not only are these errors costly, but they can negatively impact your patients’ experiences and your practice’s workflow and reputation.?
Fortunately, electronic medical records (EHRs) reduce errors. Here’s how transitioning to the right EHR can help your practice provide a better patient experience and save on costs associated with medical errors.
Common Medical Errors
Medical errors are common, costly, and a hindrance to providing quality care. According to a 2024 study in Stat Pearls, the most common ones include:
Many of these common mistakes stem from human error, leaving practices with a catch-22: humans are creating most medical mistakes, but they are also essential to providing empathetic, quality healthcare. Luckily, many of these common errors could be mitigated with the right tech stack.?
Nine Ways EHRs Reduce Medical Errors
One technology a robust healthcare tech stack needs? A modern, specialty-specific EHR that helps streamline your clinical workflow by simplifying charting and automating many routine administrative tasks. When you partner with a top-of-the-line EHR provider, the clinical efficiencies gained can help your practice reduce medical errors significantly; e.g., medication dose errors or prescription errors. An EHR is always up to date on the latest medical guidelines and can provide alerts and intelligent suggestions to help a provider make informed decisions. In fact, many private practices eliminated medical errors and provided better patient experiences by switching to an EHR suited to their specialty's unique needs.
Integrating a specialty-specific EHR into your practice’s tech stack can do the following to reduce medical errors:?
1 | Help Managing Patient Load
An EHR reduces medical errors and makes it easier to record patient data, fulfill prescriptions, and bill the insurer and/or patient. Without an EHR, all documentation has to be completed manually. With an intuitive EHR, managing a patient’s files requires only a few clicks.?
The Dermatology & Laser Centre in Studio City used to see about 150 patients per day. That patient load came with a heavy administrative burden, and their old system couldn’t keep up. When they switched EHRs, they were able to save over 325 hours a year on administrative work because their new EHR saved 30 seconds per patient. After some time using the new system, they could increase their patient load while simultaneously reducing medical errors.??
2 | Optimize Administrative and Clinical Workflows
Many medical errors stem from inefficient administrative and clinical workflows. EHRs take some of the tedious tasks off your team’s plate (and reduce the risk of errors when completing those tasks). An EHR can also supply data and recommendations to identify potential errors before they happen so your team can course correct.
In practice, this looks like more errors avoided and more time saved. Pima Eye Institute, for example, now spends 10 fewer minutes on administrative work per appointment because they switched to a more efficient and user-friendly EHR.
3 | Minimize Fraud?
Fraud and embezzlement are an unfortunate but common occurrence in the healthcare industry. Dealing with both often requires a two-pronged approach: putting measures in place to prevent them and being able to quickly identify and deal with either, should they occur. A comprehensive EHR and practice management solution with built-in safeguards does both. It creates a workflow that’s less susceptible to fraud and embezzlement and will flag any incidents or concerns as soon as they happen.
4 | Send Customized Alerts
Some medical errors are due to generic warnings or patients missing important visits, such as a follow-up visit with an ophthalmologist to check that LASIK surgery went well. To ensure patients remember their appointments, your practice can send customized alerts and appointment reminders. In the case of a LASIK surgery follow-up, the ophthalmologist could send a personalized text and email reminding the patient of the appointment’s purpose, date, and time.?
The old-school way to send customized alerts typically involves assigning one staff member to hand-write custom emails and texts and make personal calls. But having a team member manually send these alerts opens your practice up to more errors and cuts into time that team members could be spending on growing your practice.
Instead, EHRs can automatically send personalized alerts and reminders based on individual patient histories. This eliminates errors caused by generic messages or a staff member manually sending each reminder.
5 | Promote Interoperability and Data Sharing
To help patients gain seamless and secure access to more comprehensive healthcare, the U.S. government created the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016. The measure was designed to promote interoperability, greatly improving the ability to share data among patients and other healthcare providers.
Using a Cures Act-compliant EHR eases the burden of adhering to these measures from your team because your EHR automatically handles compliance. Investing in a Cures Act-compliant-EHR brings other benefits to your practice, including:
6 | Enhance Cybersecurity
While sharing data with patients and other healthcare providers is essential for compliance, it also must be kept safe from cyberattacks. The HIPAA Journal reported more than 41 million people in the U.S. were exposed to healthcare data breaches in just the first half of 2024.?
An EHR equipped with data security capabilities will protect your practice from these attacks. For example, a cloud-based solution will automatically be compliant with federal and international privacy standards and have the ability to encrypt patient data and keep it secure.
7 | Ensure Your Practice Is Compliant with Regulatory Standards
Along with being Cures Act-compliant, the right EHR to reduce medical errors will also meet other regulatory standards, such as the sensitive health information protection measures outlined in HIPAA. Also, if your practice is enrolled in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), your EHR can help reduce potential MIPS penalties and maximize any reimbursements.
The Dermatology Associates of West Texas struggled with billing challenges that affected the practice’s ability to get a good MIPS score due. Once they switched to a more robust EHR, they reduced errors, improved their reporting, and received a MIPS reimbursement for the first time.
8 | Help Your Team Avoid Cognitive Overload
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 46% of healthcare workers experience burnout. And when burn out strikes during the last leg of a long shift, documentation accuracy could suffer. Cognitive overload, an inability to process an overwhelming amount of information, can impact anyone on your clinical and administrative teams. This phenomenon can contribute to documentation errors.?
To reduce errors due to cognitive overload and burnout in your practice, shift some administrative tasks to your EHR. Dr. Kerry Soloman reflects on how his practice’s EHR simplifies and accelerates many clinical and administrative tasks, providing more headspace to his team to better focus on practice improvement initiatives and delighting patients. “Because of Nextech, my practice has more time and energy to focus on growing patient volume and providing exemplary patient care,” Solomon said.
9 | Prevent Medication Abuse
An EHR can help flag patients “shopping” for a doctor who will write them prescriptions they don’t need or who demonstrate other signs of prescription medication abuse. These patients can be convincing and tracking down medical histories can be difficult especially on paper-based systems — leading to a potential over-prescription.?
Specific features built into an EHR that help prevent this medical error could include an inventory management tracker and an easy interface to quickly access patient files and confirm approved prescriptions. Averting prescription errors is much easier when warning signs and accurate patient data are right at your fingertips.
Valley Eye Professionals were better able to track medications, lasers, and past surgeries, as well as patient behavior, once they switched to the right EHR. Dr. Jody Pitz-Seymour, a glaucoma specialist and cataract surgeon at the practice, reflected, “The beauty of this system is that it helps you see continuity. It’s much easier to follow trends over time. It keeps track of all the medicines, lasers, and surgeries people have had in the past. I can accurately see things that would be harder to see in a paper chart.”?
Reduce Errors to Help Expand Your Practice
When a practice finds the right EHR, the number of medical errors reduces, and practice staff have more to focus on different priorities. In that time, your team can direct new energy toward improving and growing the practice, such as increasing marketing activities and providing a more engaging patient experience. Some small practices – such as ImageLift – have even found they’re able to open new locations after switching EHRs and experiencing significant time-savings.
As you expand your business, your EHR should continue to evolve as well. Here are three ways modern EHRs built to scale and adapt to the shifting healthcare landscape will better serve today’s specialty practices.?
Advanced AI Integration in EHRs
While in its early stages, artificial intelligence (AI) will soon be integrated into many EHRs, reducing medical errors further and speeding up workflows. To make sure your practice can take advantage of this new technology, partner with an EHR provider who is committed to responsibly integrating AI enhancements.?
EHRs in Telemedicine
While many patients still prefer in-person appointments, a 2023 study by BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making found 29% of patients would choose telehealth over in-person. They also found an even larger chunk would be open to telehealth when they couldn’t make it to an in-person appointment. An EHR with a user-friendly patient portal makes it easy to schedule and conduct telehealth appointments, providing more flexibility and convenience for patients and practice staff.
Patient Involvement in EHRs
Even if your practice provides excellent care, you need to foster patient engagement so patients schedule appointments, embrace preventative health measures, and follow treatment plans.
In fact, engaged patients are 40% more likely to follow treatment plans and show up to appointments. A comprehensive EHR and practice management solution can foster patient engagement even when your patients aren’t in your office by providing access to a robust patient portal and chatbots available 24/7 to respond to various inquiries.
Once in the office, your EHR can continue to engage patients. Coastal Eye Institute, for example, is now able to bring up patient records on-screen during appointments with their new EHR, delighting patients who feel more empowered to engage in their own care by seeing their medical data.
Better Care, Fewer Medical Errors
A modern, specialty-specific EHR will help your practice – in ophthalmology, plastic surgery, dermatology, med spa, or orthopedics – provide better patient care and reduce medical errors. It’s a tool to lighten your staff’s cognitive load and reduce mental errors that any person can make — we’re only human, after all. Integrating a comprehensive EHR that simplifies and automates many tedious tasks into your practice’s tech stack will improve your team’s accuracy, freeing up time for your staff to focus on the patient experience, not paperwork.?
Curious what an EHR with these benefits looks like? Book a demo of Nextech’s EHR and practice management software and see for yourself.