Preparing progress notes is an important clinical documentation task that takes up a big chunk of time in a clinician’s daily schedule. Progress notes were traditionally handwritten on loose-leaf papers and then filed in folders containing patient charts.
Today, as they are being increasingly integrated with the ubiquitous electronic health records (EHR), electronic progress notes have also become a critical and inevitable tool that can help clinicians significantly improve the efficiency of their clinical practice management. There is a wide range of digitized progress notes solutions with varied designs and functionality available today.
Also, the advent of next-gen technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) expands the scope of process improvement and efficiency building in healthcare documentation management.
Many clinicians often do fragmented documentation. While preparing their notes they usually have to sift through a large number of pages. This involves reading previous patient notes written by other physicians, retrieving clinical results, and other reports of the patient’s medical history. This practice makes clinicians adopt a documentation style, where they write in smaller modules or synoptic blocks as they review information. They do not write in one uninterrupted session. As clinicians are busy professionals, such a practice results in frequent interruptions in their schedule, which hampers the efficiency of both the documentation process and their clinical practice. More time spent in administration and documentation processes means less time spent with patients. Digitized clinical notes allow clinicians to focus on their patients rather than keyboards and screens.
Author Name: Nitish P.
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