Ambulatory EMR adoption is an endemic national concern. According to a survey conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine only 4% of respondents have a fully functional EMR (with order-entry and clinical-decision support capabilities) and 13% have a basic system.
The U.S. healthcare system initiative to develop a national electronic health record (EHR) infrastructure by 2014 aims to successfully share and exchange health information and support personal health records for all Americans. When ambulatory healthcare organizations are unsuccessful in adopting electronic medical records (EMR) technology into their practices, interoperability for health information exchange (HIE), personal health records (PHR) and a national EHR will be limited.
In a recently published Speech Recognition Adoption White Paper written by the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) and the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI, formerly AAMT), a great deal of emphasis was placed on the role medical transcriptionists must continue to play in driving a successful national EHR. In summary, the paper indicated that though many EMR and Speech Recognition technology providers have taken aim at medical transcriptionists (MTs) as being a costly and obsolescent part of healthcare documentation, the limits of EMR and speech recognition technology (SRT) are being significantly complemented by the work of MTs in cases where solution providers and savvy healthcare organizations have recognized the value of the relationship between technology and MT “knowledge workers”. http://www.medicaltranscriptionoutsource.com/role-relevance-medical-transcription-emr-adoption/