Posted by Paolo Gabriel Demillo
Pediatric practices have unique needs that require specialized tools and functionalities that most, if not all, generic Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems lack. That’s why you need a pediatric EHR software built from the ground up with pediatricians and their daily tasks in mind.
Your EHR has the power to improve your quality of care, streamline workflows, and make day-to-day operations more manageable and efficient. Ironically, the wrong software can compound existing problems and ultimately throw your practice into complete disarray. Never downplay the importance of choosing an EHR that meets your specialty’s needs.
With thousands of different EHR systems on the market today, choosing the right fit for your practice can be overwhelming. And, of course, with lots on your to-do list, you may not have the time to go through every single one of them. That’s why it pays to know what essential features to look for in a pediatrics EHR software. This handy list will help you narrow down your choices a lot quicker.
Beneficial Pediatric EHR Tools
1. Well-Child Visits Tracking and Management
Well-child visits have seen a steady increase over the years. It accounts for a significant chunk of healthcare visits children and adolescents make every year. Considering the vital role well-child care plays in pediatric health maintenance and disease prevention, it’s only fitting that your EHR includes well-child visit tracking and management functionality.
A well-thought-out pediatrics EHR software should have a patient history-based alert system that reminds you and your staff whenever a patient is due for a well-child visit. This feature will enable you to send out reminders to parents and guardians to avoid missing their child’s all-important appointments.
2. Growth Tracking and Analysis
As children go through their formative years, their bodies go through changes that can serve as significant indicators of their overall health and development. Tracking these key growth milestones, like weight, height, and BMI, takes up a considerable portion of a pediatric practice’s daily functions.
Collecting these data is one thing, but analyzing them is an entirely different task. That’s why your EHR needs to have graphic growth charts for easier growth tracking. Having the ability to graphically display the progression of your patients’ growth metrics over time can do wonders in making your analysis more intuitive and improving clinical accuracy.
3. Immunization Management
Immunization isn’t only vital for pediatric health maintenance and disease prevention, it’s also notoriously complex with a web of state and federal regulations to adhere to.
The ideal pediatric EHR solution should support immunization tracking and, at the same time, be compliant with the different documentation regulatory requirements. It should also be comprehensive enough to enable practices to record critical details during immunization administration like the date, lot number, site, route of administration, and automatic reminders for when the patient is due for a follow-up or further immunizations.
4. Weight-Based Medication Dosing
Unlike other specialties that focus on adults and geriatrics, pediatricians base medication dosages on their patients’ body weight. Having pediatric EHR software that automatically tracks a patient’s current body weight to generate a recommended dosage can make prescribing medication so much easier, faster, and more accurate.
5. Integrated Practice Management and Billing
While it’s essential to have all the pediatric-specific features, a complete pediatric EHR software should also support your practice's administrative and billing aspects. Having an all-in-one platform saves you time and money on maintaining multiple systems.
Meditab’s Intelligent Medical Software (IMS) covers every area of your practice, from clinical and administrative functions to billing and office management. The unparalleled customizability that IMS offers allows you to tailor the system to fit your specialty’s specific needs. From pediatrics to allergy, fertility, mental health, and 40+ other specialties, there is an IMS for every practice.
Every specialty contends with different sets of unique challenges and needs. And solely relying on a generic EHR is no longer enough. Remember that unique needs require tailored solutions. So if you want to maximize efficiency and productivity, choose a pediatric EHR software.
