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EHR. How does this implement? - Lisa
Posted: May 19, 2012
When EHR take over the hospital, and other clinics, does it actaully change EVERYTHING at the beginning, as in 100% EHR? What is the process before my volume goes down and eventually reaches zilch. Thanks
What EHR is - mt22
[ In Reply To ..]ELECTRONIC
HEALTH
RECORD
Many institutions have had this in place for years. The EHR in and of itself does not mean your work will do anything. Information still needs to be entered into the record. HOW *that* happens is the question you want to ask and that will depend on what program your facility goes with. They may decide to stay with MTs and then nothing changes for you. They may decide to go with a mixture of technology and MTs. W/o knowing what choices they are making, the correct question of how that happens can't be answered.
As MT22 says. Some of my accounts have implemented, - others have not. I am usually clueless. NM
[ In Reply To ..]x
More details, please - Lisa
[ In Reply To ..]Not to be too critical, but sometimes posts are just very, very short and quite miss the question. I hope folks aren't concerned they'll get canned at their job if they do anything. The question is: EHR, some experiences from others and what they went through would be nice. I know all of this is open and not uniform, but your experience would be nice.
details - mt22
[ In Reply To ..]Example 1: In 1996, I began dialing into the hospital system and accessing dictation and transcribing into their platform.
Example 2: One doc's office went to Dragon and I edited it. That was in 1997. I continued doing that for 4 years until I left the practice for other reasons. I miss that gig, easy, easy money.
Example 3: If you do radiology at all, we've been transcribing into the hospital's EHR for years. This went from doing it in-house, to being sent home and dialing in-house. Pretty seamless actually.
Now I transcribe for an MTSO where I access the voice files online, transcribe online in whatever program the MTSO is using and call it a day. Doctors are usually able to access by voice or computer, records within a very short time.
Everyone is all a-twitter because of the "EHR mandate" (which really isn't even a mandate, it's just tied to financial incentive to switch over) and the reality is -- IT DOESN'T CHANGE ANYTHING.
As I already said :), the program your hospital/clinic/office/MTSO goes to is where you will see changes.
For instance, many hospitals are using EPIC. I've been lucky enough to NOT encounter this yet, but I understand, that in a very short (sometimes a matter of weeks) period of time, the majority of MTs are let go because the program/process is that good.
However, I know of many, many offices that are still using tapes, so we're not fading as quickly as some would have us to believe.
Your are truly a friend - Lisa
[ In Reply To ..]Thanks very, very much. Exactly what I needed to hear. You spent a lot of time, thank you. I know it all is up in the air, but a bit of a roadmap is all I needed, and you provided that. Many thanks.
And on an anecdotal note, some facilities are - turning AWAY from EPIC
[ In Reply To ..]I have no direct knowledge of this myself, but when talking to someone at MD-IT last year I mentioned that I had lost my job because the account I had been hired for had gone to an EPIC-based platform. She acknowledged that it was the bane of any good MT's existence, but she did say that they had a couple of accounts who had gone to EPIC and realized that it wasn't all that and a bag of chips and were then back to dictating and using MTs.
I don't think that's going to happen a lot, though.
More about EPIC - Dog lover
[ In Reply To ..]Oh, I know about EPIC. The hospital that I was transcribing for at home went on it and my earnings went from 3K a month to around $600-800 because of EPIC. I HATE EPIC!
On an account I type on for EHR, a lot of the info is put in - by a nurse, sm
[ In Reply To ..]and we type markers that are set up in the file. The physician dictates that marker (or you pull up the patient and look up the number if not given to you) and that is put into the demographics. We then type the part of that the physician dictates not already set up by the nurse who put in the original information into that file. A lot of short jobs for this as most of it has already been entered into the record, so it takes a little longer to make the line count. I resent the fact that I could probably be making more if I didn't have all of this stuff to look up. I spend about 5-10 minutes every hour doing stuff that does not involve typing the record (which I do not get paid for), so for 4-5 hours, that is 20-50 minutes of my day of work that I am not being paid for. Don't get me wrong they think that paying the low cpl and having a lower character count is compensation for that, but have typed more lph on higher character counts without all the clerical stuff involved in putting in the information into the EHR. Unfortunately, the compensation does not add up to the work that has to be done (does it ever nowadays). I have been working on this EHR platform for a few years, so it doesn't get any better. You just have to hope for longer dictated minutes so you don't have to look up so many patients that takes up time not being paid. The expectations are still the same as any other transcription job. The benefits are that you have all of the patient's information available for review, so pretty easy to type on a daily basis and not send work to QA. You can just about look up any information you need to fill in anything questionable.
This sounds awful, another built-in rate drop with change of - technology. I am wondering how many could afford
[ In Reply To ..]it. I keep thinking the downward spiral has to have hit bottom.
BTW, that extra clerical IS lower-skill work, an excuse for lower pay, but the job also requires a higher skill set. If only everybody who says they won't do it didn't.
EHR? or do you mean EMR - sherry
[ In Reply To ..]If you mean EMR--it depends what software pkg. they choose. I had a clinic that I transcribed for for for over 13 years and when they changed to this the entire account was gone.
Another account I still type for and the people in their office copy and paste the note/letters into the software.
Another account just switched and out of 6 doctors, I only have one and he only dictates partial notes/letters and takes care of the rest on his end by copying and pasting info into his templates.
Hopes this helps, however EMR is really doing a number on medical transcriptionists.
EMR-electronic medical record, EHR-electronic health record - same thing, nm
[ In Reply To ..].
EHR - EMR analogies - what I tell people
[ In Reply To ..]EHR is a lot like Carfax - just a useful source of data. Where EMR is going to VR or otherwise without American MTs - I keep reminding people about telephone operators! Most everybody hates getting an ESL phone operator or worse yet, a frustrating computer answering system. I've noticed a lot of companies are coming back to American customer service and operators because of all the complaints.
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