Functional EHR Systems

The EHR has many benefits over the paper patient chart. Not only does it hold all of the patient information, data, and records needed by providers to diagnose and treat the patient, its functionality is a benefit in itself. With the EHR, providers can easily find, share, and search patient records to meet unique needs. In order to achieve this functionality, the EHR must be formatted in very specific ways.  There are four functional benefits identified by the Institute of Medicine that EHRs facilitate: health maintenance, trend analysis, alerts, and decision support.

This resource discusses the ways that the medical record data is stored and how the form leads to the functional benefits. This content will show more of the EHR by looking at how it is formatted to ensure that it is usable as intended.

After completing this resource, learners will be able to:

• Explain the functional benefits of the EHR
• Explain different methods for capturing and recording EHR data
• Compare different formats of EHR data and prominent code sets