Emr Software's Impact On The Environment

By Author: Jamie Hanson
Total Articles: 3534
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The world has realized what "green" means and more companies are aimed at being "green". This includes medical practices, hospitals, and other healthcare environments where costs are skyrocketing. Not only can EMR Software, i.e. Electronic Medical Records, economize healthcare establishments money, but they can also lower the use of physical goods like paper and even energy. Given below are few ways by which a healthcare organization can go 'green' by using EMR software.

Reduced Use of Paper
Manual medical records are on sheets of paper slipped into paper folders. The paper records grow with each patient and their treatment. This reduces natural resources and has other ecological impacts. With the use of EMR paper records are not necessary. This actually saves trees from being cut and used to make more paper. The software preserves the records and doctors can have instant access to it unlike paper record which need fax, copy, printing, etc. Prescriptions can even be provided electronically to pharmacies so there' no requirement for a hard copy of the prescription and the possibility of a medical error due to the ...
... prescription being illegible goes down substantially.

Space Needs Decrease
When paper medical records are replaced with electronic medical records the need for storage space decreases significantly. Many healthcare organizations have entire rooms specifically for storage of medical records. However, EMR software completely eliminates the need for a hard copy of medical records. As a result, the space needed diminishes and this is considered "green" because the natural resources needed to support that space also cut down.

Energy Requirements Decrease
Additionally, energy requirements go down when electronically medical records are used. It is not necessary for copying and faxing of medical records not to mention the extra storage space is not needed and this cuts back substantially on power bills.

These are few factors which can help in healthcare establishments grow "green".

Electronic Health Records system funding is now available for most doctors and hospitals. EHR Software systems are now being required for Medicare and Medicaid providers