That is a fantastic post and delineates better than I could ever have a well functioning electronic medical records system.
The problem is for individuals or small groups unwilling or unable to participate. The fact is, their day is over. The scope of modern medicine is so broad, going alone in a practice simply can’t be tolerated by the evolving systemic change.
The problem is for individuals or small groups unwilling or unable to participate. The fact is, their day is over. The scope of modern medicine is so broad, going alone in a practice simply can’t be tolerated by the evolving systemic change.
Thanks. : )
As I said, I currently work in HR, my focus being in payroll processing and regulatory and tax compliance and in managing the Human Resources Information System (HRIS) so admittedly I’m a bit of a tech-y myself but I have seen a big change in recent years of moving from paper record keeping and manual processes in payroll and HR to e-processing, biometric hand scan time clocks, cloud computing, direct deposit and what many employees want and what many now demand.
Employees, especially younger workers want things like being able to access their pay stubs and W-2’s, view time off balances and request time off, make changes in their W-4 withholding or their direct deposit accounts in an on line in a secure environment 24-7 from their personal computers, tablets or smart phones.
For several years now we have held our annual open enrollment on line and new hire enrollment on line – all employees log in to the secure site and make their new hire or open enrollment insurance elections rather than filling out paper forms and those elections are electronically transmitted to the insurance companies, greatly reducing the error rate of illegible hand written paper forms being keyed into our HR benefit system and then again into a separate insurance system by humans who may not always key the information correctly or the problem of the paper forms getting lost in inter office mail or USPS mail or sitting on someone’s desk.
Employees can also see their current enrollments and see what their per-pay deductions would be if they were to make changes before they submit those changes. They can print out their own benefit statements and print their own insurance cards, they can even find providers and even make appointments on line.
Employees are also given secure access to the insurance company’s web sites so they can track their own insurance claims and EOB’s, track their deductibles and track their FSA balances in real time – giving employees those tools makes them more self sufficient and reduces the employer’s administrative costs and burdens. They can also get real time information on their 401k account balances, make deferral changes and fund changes, view any fund prospectus on line without having to wait for quarterly statements or on snail mail.
Being a manufacture, we have some employees who do not have personal computers or work computers or smart phones and are still rather computer illiterate but they are the exception rather than the rule now days. We accommodate them by providing an on-site computer kiosks with a printer in a private area and if they need help or support, we in HR provide it but they still must use the electronic systems.
There was a time when these sorts of systems were only available to large employers but now days companies like ADP and Ceridian offer affordable e-processing, direct deposit, scalable solutions for even very small employers. Employers that still rely on manual time keeping systems, manual live paper payroll checks and paper insurance enrollment forms and other HR forms and employees who cannot adapt are dinosaurs and will soon either adapt or go extinct. The same can be said for healthcare providers.