Chronic care management is a process that can help individuals manage their chronic conditions. It involves working with people who have long-term illnesses or conditions to help them overcome challenges such as limited mobility, memory problems, depression, and anxiety. One of the best ways you can support these clients is by using an EHR(Electronic Health Records) system to track their symptoms and treatments over time.
Chronic care is one of the most significant challenges facing the healthcare system today.
The chronic disease burden continues to grow and has become increasingly expensive, time-consuming, and challenging for patients, providers, and health systems. Chronic care management (CCM) is a coordinated approach that supports patients with long-term conditions through all stages of their care experience. CCM can optimize patient outcomes while reducing costs by providing an integrated approach to coordinating patient needs from multiple providers across multiple settings—with an emphasis on connecting individuals with the right resources at each step along their journey to improve health outcomes while reducing unnecessary hospitalizations or emergency department visits.
CCM requires a team approach in order to address multiple stakeholders that are involved in each patient’s journey—including doctors, nurses and other clinical staff; pharmacists; social workers; physical therapists; nutritionists/dietitians; mental health professionals (e.g., psychologists); community services organizations such as Meals on Wheels or home healthcare agencies if needed; etc.—and ensure they are working together towards better outcomes for those living with chronic conditions.
An EHR can help coordinate care by facilitating communication and data sharing among providers, allowing them to work together as a team on behalf of their patients.
For example, a patient may have several healthcare providers—a primary care physician or PCP, an endocrinologist, and perhaps other specialists in the same or different health systems. The multiple providers need to communicate with each other and share information about their patients so they can work together toward the best interests of the patient.
An EHR can provide comprehensive, consistent data regarding a patient's health status, enabling providers to more effectively manage their chronic conditions.
This type of information is crucial for primary care physicians who are responsible for coordinating care and managing related conditions that are not in their specialty area.
EHRs help primary care physicians manage patients with multiple chronic conditions by providing easy access to clinical information from different providers within the same organization. When it comes to managing patients with multiple chronic conditions, EHRs can help physicians coordinate care across teams in order to facilitate communication about medication needs and other factors that may affect treatment plans for individual patients or groups of patients at risk for complications related to having multiple diseases. In addition, EHRs enable seamless transitions between clinicians as well as across practice settings when necessary—allowing healthcare organizations and providers alike greater flexibility in terms of how they deliver care while maintaining quality standards across all aspects of patient management processes.
An EHR can also assist in maintaining privacy for patients who wish to keep their information private.
It is important that you keep your patient’s information confidential and protected, especially if they are a minor or have sensitive medical conditions. Not only is it unethical to share this information with others without permission from the patient, it may also lead to legal troubles for you as well as your practice if any actionable harm comes about due to an improper release of protected health information (PHI).
EHRs can be used to protect patient privacy by allowing doctors and nurses alike the ability to access only the parts of medical records that they need while they are working on them at any given time. This will help prevent accidental or intentional breaches which could result in fines or penalties being levied against the healthcare provider responsible for releasing PHI without consent first
Streamline your workflow and improve patient engagement.
A well-designed EHR will assist with your workflow, allowing you to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time with patients. It can also help you improve patient engagement, as well as your practice and patient experience.
EHRs can be used to enhance the overall quality of medical care. When it comes to chronic disease management, for example, EHRs provide patients with a convenient and accessible way to keep track of their progress over time. This allows them to engage in self-care activities that are often difficult for those who are sick or disabled because they’re unable to get out as easily as others do on a daily basis (e.g., pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy).
Make sure you are giving the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.
Understand the severity of your patient’s condition.
Make sure you are giving the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.
Make sure you are not giving the wrong treatment to the wrong patient at the wrong time.
Use EHRs to prevent and manage related conditions.
EHRs can be a useful tool for identifying patients who are at risk of developing a related condition. They can also help you identify those who have already been diagnosed, and need to be monitored for the development of complications.
To do this, your EHR should allow you to set up alerts and markers when making entries in the chart that indicate that a patient is at risk for developing a particular illness or condition based on their existing medical history. The system will then alert you whenever a new entry is made by flagging it as being possibly related to an existing diagnosis or condition (e.g., if they develop diabetes after receiving medication for high blood pressure).
We hope you have found this information helpful. Chronic conditions are a significant challenge facing the health care system today, but EHRs can help to ensure that patients receive the right treatment at the right time—and that they do so in an efficient manner. If your facility has not yet implemented an electronic health record system or is still using paper records, we encourage you to explore our offerings and consider making the switch today!