Medical record abstraction is a key way of verifying the accuracy of the medical records kept in your practice, clinic or facility. This is a service provided by professionals who are experienced with medical coding and billing, and it can be done for many reasons. Here are three times when you should consider using a service for abstracting data from your medical charts.
Moving from Paper to Electronic Health Records
While most medical practices have converted to electronic health records, yours may just be making this move now. Moving from paper to electronic health records is a labor-intensive undertaking. It is a good idea to hire a team to do this for you so that your administrative and medical teams do not have to take time and attention away from patients.
Changing Electronic Systems
Medical record abstraction is also a good idea if you are changing electronic record keeping systems. If your practice converted to electronic health records early, the original software that you used may now be obsolete. You may need to upgrade and migrate your data. Abstracting information from the charts is a good method of verifying that the data migration was accurate.
Merging With Another Medical Practice
You may also need to use a medical chart abstraction service if you are merging your practice or clinic with another. If you are merging your independent practice with a large healthcare system or a medical network, you may need to abstract the data from your health records and migrate it into the system that is used by the network. The abstraction process allows you to indicate which patients you had before the merger. This manual abstraction also verifies that the data is accurate once it is moved. Overall, it’ll make the entire process of moving easier for you and everyone else involved.
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