The need for Employee EHR (eEHR)…

An Employee Health Record refers to any health / medical -related information created, obtained, or maintained by the organization regarding an employee’s physical or mental condition. This may include –

-          Results of medical exams and tests (Scans, Pathology Tests)

-          Medical History

-          Insurance Documents

-          Hospitalization Documents

-          Medical Certificates / Doctors’ Notes / Opinion of other Healthcare Providers, etc.

An eEHR means that all of the above can be accessed through a computer – may be on a local machine or over the internet.

Looking at the most obvious reasons – promoting employee wellness, preventing spread of communicable diseases, reducing stress load – on the whole creating a health / safe working environment - most organizations understand the importance of monitoring employee health.

Hence companies generally mandate at least, a once a year, health check-up for its employees.   Some companies also opt for a more segmented approach – advising health check-up for employees depending on their age, work load, etc.

Managing the records is really important – to ensure systematic control from creation or receipt through processing, distribution, maintenance, retrieval, retention, and final disposition.

However, taking care of all these in physical files can be quite a task,,, for both employers who have low attrition rates (will have a lot of accumulated information) as well those with high attrition rates (you will have less papers but more files).

Walk in – need for eEHR – accessing / managing these records through a computer can make life simpler. For starters – no more file cabinets, all information is stored in one place, can be easily searched and retrieved. You don’t have to worry about losing a file – it just seems much more organized. Moreover, if the system is web based, you will higher flexibility – sharing of records will become much of easier and there will no geographical limitation to the access.

Having said that - the system must take care of the security concerns – file encryption, audit trails / logs can be some measures taken.

Nonetheless, eEHR certainly seems like a good support tool for employee management.