9 Top Benefits of EHR Systems

Electronic health record systems (EHRs) store digital patient records consisting of any data related to a patient’s health and treatment history. They can include information about procedures, surgeries, allergies, lab tests, and medications, as well as information on factors such as substance use, pregnancy outcomes, and access to healthy food and safe water. This article will delve into the benefits of EHRs for both care providers and their patients.

What Are the Benefits of EHRs?

EHRs provide a complete, longitudinal record of a patient’s care and health history. The latest cloud-based EHRs connect to other systems, giving providers access to information from other EHRs, disease knowledgebases, government regulatory databases, and clinical research systems. Clinicians can use that information to enhance diagnoses, personalize treatment plans, and identify opportunities for their patients to participate in clinical trials. EHRs can also automate processes such as clinician note-taking, referrals, and follow-ups, and they can help streamline the exchange of information between payers and care providers.

9 Benefits of EHRs in Healthcare

Investing in a full-featured EHR can help healthcare organizations reach their goals for driving efficiency, streamlining operations, and enhancing clinical care. Read on to learn more about the nine main benefits of EHRs.

1. Enhance patient care and safety
   EHRs are designed to help clinicians make diagnoses and enhance treatments, with the goal of providing safe patient care. For example, clinicians can access aggregated and anonymized patient data on a specific disease or illness to develop a treatment plan for an individual patient based on what has already worked for patients in other communities.
   
   EHRs can also help enhance the patient experience and limit clinical errors by allowing clinicians to share patient data—such as information on a patient’s previous diagnoses, drug reactions, allergies, lab results, and currently prescribed medications--with other departments and outside specialists. This gives each member of the care team a comprehensive, holistic view of each patient, helping them coordinate care and avoid ordering duplicative or conflicting tests and treatments. The simple act of digitizing what were once paper patient health records has enhanced care quality by reducing medication documentation errors, according to research published in the National Library of Medicine. While preventable medical errors are still a serious problem, the use of EHRs can help providers avoid them by making relevant patient data easily accessible to clinicians.
2. Optimize efficiencies and productivity
   Rather than having to flip through paper files or access incomplete digital files of a patient’s health history, clinicians can tap EHRs for a comprehensive view that includes medications, allergies, previous conditions and their treatments, lab results, and any treatments from other specialists or care providers in a different location. This consolidated view enables providers to spend more time with the patient in front of them. EHRs can also integrate with providers’ finance systems so relevant patient data and clinical encounter details flow directly to the back office, helping automate and speed up coding, claims management, and billing. Organizations can also give patients access to their lab results and other medical data via online portals tied to EHRs, as well as standardize and automate their patient scheduling and assist with some of their regulatory compliance processes.
3. Enhance coordination among healthcare providers
   The latest EHRs can connect with those used by other providers, giving clinicians access to a comprehensive view of a patient’s medications and clinical encounters. This integration, which helps care team members coordinate care, is especially important for patients who are seeing specialists, receive treatment in emergency settings, and/or are transitioning between care settings, according to the US Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
4. Enhance data security and privacy
   Healthcare providers use EHRs to store and manage massive amounts of sensitive data. With increases in the frequency of cyberattacks and the number of data protection regulations, it’s crucial that providers make data security a top priority. In 2024, the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights tracked 831 major health data breaches affecting more than 182.4 million people.
   
   Modern, cloud-based EHRs are designed to help safeguard against such incidents, in part by applying patches to address the latest system vulnerabilities. Capabilities also include end user tracking, audit investigations, event or threshold alerts, and detection of anomalous activities. The latest EHRs can also flag weak passwords, noncompliance with hospital policies, and security issues related to the use of handheld devices.
5. Limit paperwork and administrative costs
   In the old days, medical transcriptionists converted a clinician’s dictated or handwritten notes into records—a time-consuming process prone to errors. In addition, it was expensive to copy and mail a single patient’s paper records. With EHRs, changes to a patient’s record are entered directly by the clinician, limiting the opportunity for errors that can result from misunderstood medical terminology or difficult-to-read handwriting.
   
   However, creating and maintaining electronic clinical records is one of the most stressful parts of a clinician’s job and can cause burnout, lower job satisfaction, and lead to medical errors because of input errors, according to the American Medical Informatics Association. The latest EHRs use ambient listening and provide clinicians with voice-controlled and touch screen interfaces to capture the details of patient consults, exams, and treatments (with the consent of the patient). They then compile and summarize the details of the visit and enable clinicians to add the summary to the EHR and share it with other members of the care team.
6. Easily access patient information
   Paper health records made it challenging for clinicians to find the exact information they needed when they needed it. The first EHR systems stored and managed patient records related to a single care facility. But newer, interoperable systems connect records held by different providers and can provide access to third-party genomic, clinical trial, medical research, disease, demographic, and other real-world data, giving clinicians a comprehensive foundation from which to make accurate diagnoses and deliver personalized care.
   
   A healthcare provider that serves Montana and northern Wyoming expanded deployment of its EHR to all 30 of its hospitals to allow clinicians to view patient data even when patients have received care in different locations. Clinicians no longer need to make multiple phone calls to compile a single patient record. The new EHRs enable them to access information quickly, helping them provide comprehensive patient care and spend less time on administrative tasks.
7. Enhance clinical decision-making
   As described previously, EHRs contain data on a patient’s entire health history, including conditions, medications, lab results, treatment plans, and lifestyle indicators, and they can connect to data contained in other EHRs, drug information repositories, public health records, and clinical trial systems. Every piece of that data, regardless of its source, can contribute to an accurate and timely view of factors relevant to diagnosing and treating patients.
8. Assist in regulatory compliance and reporting
   In the US, HIPAA and the HITECH Act require providers to limit access to patient records to safeguard sensitive data. They both also call for the creation of audit logs to show that providers are complying with these laws. Another US law, the 21st Century Cures Act, requires EHR developers to include in their solutions the ability to export a patient’s entire health record so providers can’t block patients from viewing their own information. In the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation, which mandates how personal information such as health data can be collected, stored, and used, requires EHR developers to build in strong security measures and facilitate the implementation of data retention policies so only necessary data is collected and retained.
9. Facilitate research and analysis
   Medical researchers can use anonymized data from patient records, augmented by data gathered from other sources—including drug databases, government reports on population health and demographics, and repositories of clinical trial data—to analyze trends, track patient journeys, and identify potential treatments. But that data isn’t all that useful without the advanced analytics tools that are now being integrated into EHRs. For example, public health officials might use these tools to analyze data compiled from multiple providers’ EHRs to forecast a greater-than-usual outbreak of the flu in the coming season, allowing providers to prepare by ordering additional vaccines and adjusting their staff levels.

Embrace the Future of Healthcare with Oracle

Among the many capabilities of Oracle Health EHR, it can assist in identifying needed tests to help keep groups of patients healthy, target those who need follow-up appointments in order to meet quality targets, and combine cleaned-up data from multiple providers. The EHR runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, enhancing the security of the sensitive health data it stores. It also includes AI capabilities that prep physicians with patient histories right before a visit, help physicians filter information that’s relevant to a specific illness, allow clinicians to navigate the EHR using plain language commands, and use ambient listening to “listen in” on physician-patient conversations and draft summaries for inclusion in the EHR.

EHR Benefits FAQs

What are the benefits of EHR interoperability?

EHR interoperability makes it possible for health professionals to securely store and manage clinical and operational data contained in disparate systems, share it, and make it accessible to providers, patients, payers, clinical researchers, and public health officials.

What is a key advantage of using EHRs over paper?

Electronic health records are superior to paper records mainly because they make it easier for health professionals to search, share, and secure patient and other forms of data.