Efficient medical data entry is a vital asset for healthcare providers as it enhances patient care, quality of services and compliance with Meaningful Use requirements.

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Though their healthcare data is an extremely valuable asset, most people don’t
realize this. Health information that is properly managed can be better integrated into
the treatment and care that is provided by hospitals and medical practices. Accurate
patient data is a key factor in improving outcomes. It’s therefore hardly surprising that
efficient medical data entry services that improve the value of patient information are
always in demand. These services have now become all the more important and crucial
with ICD-10 requirements. Medical data will only get more complex with regulatory
changes and it’s important for patients as well as healthcare providers to realize the
value and full implications of the information.
Accurate Healthcare Data Improves Care
An individual’s healthcare data enables clinicians to provide better care, improving
patient satisfaction and outcomes. Records that are comprehensive and accurate can
result in better diagnoses and appropriate treatment. However, experts believe that
much of healthcare data is never used. It is estimated that around 80% of the data
remains in semi-structured or free-text form, in the manner it was created at the point-
of-care. Such data is never used and provides no value.
That isn’t quite the ideal way forward. That’s where professional medical data entry
experts can help. They capture all clinical data required to manage patients according to
best practices by efficiently entering data into the health information Their valuable
support includes collecting data from various sources, maintaining electronic records
and logs, running reports, and archiving.

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Making Healthcare Data more Useable
To reduce the burdensome task of managing healthcare data, industry experts offer
useful suggestions on how to make that information more usable.
 Interoperable Technology for Dealing with Complexity
Complexity is only set to increase with healthcare data. Multiple sources need to
be handled including offices, hospitals, clinics and pharmacies. With the changes
in the regulatory environment, patient data has become voluminous,
inconsistent, and available in structured or unstructured formats. This
complexity often causes inaccuracies and mistakes in the medical records.
Interoperable technology is necessary for analyzing and managing this health
data so that its value is not lost. In such a scenario, patient access to health data
is important as it would empower them and positively contribute to their health.
 Need to Minimize Data Errors
Data errors seep into the health records, with 20% to 50% error rates in medical
coding. Physicians also find data entry into electronic health records quite
cumbersome and time-consuming. Mistakes occur in sub-classifications of the
patient’s condition, which also results in the wrong treatment and further
compounding of the error in the health record, making the data unreliable and
unable to provide truthful insights.

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 Faster Processing through High Tech Systems Needed
It is estimated that physicians create around 2 billion clinical reports and notes
every year. However, most healthcare organizations do not have the staff
numbers to process such large volumes of data. Processing doesn’t involve only
going through the data, but also extracting, validating and normalizing it.
Hospitals and practices must replace conventional technology with new systems
that can carry out the processing faster and transform large data volumes to
real-time analytics to be used at the point-of-care. Only this would help prevent
mistakes and overlapping of reports which translates to better care for patients.
Conventional data capture processes make the data unusable beyond medical
billing.
 Prompt Reporting of Critical Findings
Another major issue is that critical findings still do not get reported. Automated
notification systems need to be set in place in hospitals and other healthcare
organizations so they can be alerted of critical findings. However, many
healthcare organizations do not have such systems in place, which means critical
results from radiology reports, diagnostic imaging, etc., are still not notified on
time.
Without such systems, providers still rely on manual processing of large volumes
of records. Apart from consuming a significant amount of time, manual

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processing is also error-prone and often leads to communication failures or
delays, which causes legal issues. This significantly hampers treatment, even with
serious long-term effects. These repercussions could be avoided if the hospital or
healthcare facility has a system of automatic patient notification.
Using Healthcare Data to Improve Workflow
Doctors must understand that healthcare data plays a crucial role in improving workflow.
The use of EMRs (Electronic Medical Records) has been mandated since 2014 by the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. EMR use has been a matter of complaint for
many doctors, primarily because of the attention they have to divide between
examining patients and entering data. Otherwise they would have to enter data after
patient consultations, which would extend their working hours. Data entry outsourcing
can help hospitals and clinics focus on their core processes and also enable the data
process to be more integrated into their functioning.
Technology can deal with such issues and improve workflow, along with optimization of
patient outcomes. Hospitals and physicians must find a way to maintain this balance.
There are also solutions to facilitate interoperability with existing systems in your
practice. The right health IT solutions can enable mitigation of many of these challenges
and make healthcare data a true asset for hospitals and practices.