Physician practices, clinics and hospitals in Tennessee and Georgia have begun adopting electronic health records and software programs to expedite patient claims processes and allow real-time interactions between physicians, laboratories and others who have access to the system, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports.
North Valley Medical Center in Dunlap, Tenn., five years ago transferred from paper records to a secure, password-protected EHR system and the number of days it takes to process insurance claims has decreased from 30 to within five or six, Gail Ewton, office manager, said.
"Locally, use has quadrupled (in the past 15 years), but I would say it is still less than 12% to 15% of the national rate," Chris Daly, vice president of Medical Technology Sales, which markets EHR systems in the Chattanooga, Tenn., area, said.
White's Pediatric Clinic in Dalton, Ga., has had an EHR system since 1997, and it is connected to the Internet so any of three locations can access patients' medical information. The lab also can enter results while physicians are seeing patients, office manager Janet Barnhardt said.
Parkridge Medical Center in Chattanooga also has plans to adopt an EHR system, and Memorial Hospital has begun using software in some of its departments, spokespersons from each of the hospitals said.
However, Sue Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom, warned that some people may be dishonest about their health information if they think it could be input into a database, which could create problems. "A lot of medical research is done based on self-reporting," she said (Carroll, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 6/26).