As a veterinarian, what would stop you from adopting an innovation that would help you to more successfully fulfill your professional oath; i.e., increase your ability to practice quality medicine, advance knowledge for the veterinary profession and protect animal health? And, what if this innovation also created daily efficiencies in patient care and improved the client experience? Would any of us hesitate to take advantage of this tool to support quality pet care?
The innovation exists today in the form of the electronic medical record (EMR)!
I had the privilege recently to speak at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine as part of a continuing education event . Program speakers addressed many attributes of the EMR: improved communication and patient outcomes, better pharmacovigilance and public health information to name a few.*
Banfield has an EMR called PetWare; other EMR systems are available for veterinary medicine with different features, interface styles and system requirements. Many of the advantages of an EMR are obvious – an electronic patient record can’t get lost in a stack of files in your treatment area. Other advantages include the time saved when trying to read your colleagues handwriting or interpreting a patient history spread across a 6-inch deep medical file. These efficiencies are tremendous to be sure, but there are other far-reaching benefits to be gained. Only with an EMR can individual patient records be aggregated to conduct population research and provide evidence in support of clinical decision-making. Population research generates new knowledge and understanding of disease risk factors and threats to pet health. Using EMR, these insights can also be integrated and displayed at the point of care making conversations with clients more meaningful and productive.
As a large veterinary practice network of over 760 hospitals with an EMR, Banfield has the ability to do just that. But there is no reason that the whole veterinary profession couldn’t be connected through EMR use in the same way. Using a standard nomenclature or language, like SNOMED, primary care and referral institutions could communicate and support a continuum of patient care –benefiting pets and clients alike. Banfield is currently integrating the AAHA subset of these standard codes into PetWare so that we will be able to share medical information with systems and providers outside the Banfield practice network.
You still might be wondering how an EMR can make a difference in the daily practice of veterinary medicine. Imagine the following possibilities if you adopted the use of EMR in your clinic. As part of a pet health surveillance system, adulterated product threats are detected early and alerts generated to minimize illness and adverse events. In customizing care to a particular pet, for example, the decision to vaccinate a dog against Lyme disease would consider population prevalence by state in addition to pet lifestyle and use of external parasite control. A client who has a pet on a weight management program could view not only the population trends in pet obesity over time but their pet’s weight loss journey through graphing of weight and body condition over time. These tools are within the reach of veterinarians today through the use of the EMR. We can transform the quality of care and the client experience beyond what can be imagined. It’s up to us to take the lead as professionals to embrace EMR – an innovation to move the standard of veterinary care forward.
*If you’re interested in obtaining the PDF to the PowerPoint slides from the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s event on The Electronic Medical Record, please email the BARK team at bark@banfield.net.