As Washington politicians have so far failed to come to any agreement about how to fix the U.S. healthcare, there’s no shortage of ideas from those around the country.
It may be the easiest place for patients to access their lab results, get prescription refills, send a message to their doctors or schedule an appointment. Yet not all patients are sold on the idea of patient portals.
For all the time and work involved in training doctors to use the electronic health record (EHR) to document care, the benefits are many. For one, the EHR has a pivotal role to play in medication reconciliation, which can be particularly helpful with elderly patients and those who may have a substance abuse problem.
Expanding the scope of practice for staff members, such as nurses and medical technicians, might sound scary but it can be good both for them and your patients, says Fred N. Pelzman, M.D., a New York-based internal medicine physician.
