Clinical documentation systems: another link between technology and quality

Everyone who works in the healthcare industry grapples with multiple pressures. Organizational leaders and managers face challenges related to delivering high-quality care, ensuring patient safety, reducing costs, and providing exceptional customer service. In healthcare, technology has not only ushered in sophisticated tools, but it has also improved and complemented existing processes. This article focuses on emerging technological advances that promise to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of one of the most important elements in the delivery of care -- clinical documentation. A number of clinical documentation companies have figured out how to directly engage the physician and capture critical information at the same time. The technology provides physicians a fast, easy, stable, and flexible way of documentation and offers management a mechanism for guiding usage and even electronically dialoguing with physicians in a customized and personalized manner. Healthcare leaders must support the adoption of technologies that make processes more efficient, and they also must be proactive in such efforts.