Doctors can enjoy variety of advantages from implementing EMR after initial learning curve

Most of the advantages that electronic medical records (EMRs) deliver for medically oriented practices also apply to aesthetic surgery practices, according to William Beeson, M.D., a facial plastic surgeon in Carmel, Ind.

Key drivers for EMR adoption include legislative requirements, the need to manage billing of third-party payers and the efficiency improvements that EMRs can bring to office workflow, says Dr. Beeson, who is also a clinical professor in the departments of dermatology and otolaryngology — head and neck surgery, Indiana University School of Medicine.

Traditionally, physicians’ key reason for not adopting EMRs was their significant cost, “Not only in terms of hardware and software, but also the time waste and inefficiency that’s involved in transitioning from hardcopy to EMRs,” Dr. Beeson says, adding that some practices report productivity losses of 30 to 40 percent during the transition period.

Moreover, he says  some aesthetic surgeons believe it makes little intuitive sense that their practices, which generally do limited third-party billing, could benefit from EMRs.

Read the Full Article at http://cosmeticsurgerytimes.modernmedicine.com/EMRexcellence

Source: by John Jesitus for Cosmetic Surgery Times, posted January 1, 2012 at http://cosmeticsurgerytimes.modernmedicine.com/EMRexcellence