To the layman the term “clinical abstraction” almost sounds like a medical procedure, but healthcare administrative specialists know that this aspect of EHR (Electronic Health Record) technology is an important function in data gathering.
Clinical abstraction refers to the process of searching a medical file to find key points of data that are needed for secondary use. This ability is important for many aspects of medicine, including use in clinical research, quality control, measuring performance, monitoring diseases, treatment methods and much more.
As a subcategory of EHR, the abstractions process, which is essentially a kind of data mining, has been developed to a complex degree. For example, it can include the processes of categorizing, coding issues, interpreting data, transforming data, summarizing, calculating and more.
Needless to say, clinical abstraction can be overwhelming, considering the truly astronomical amounts of information that are now a routine part of every patient’s record and the overall administrative paperwork that burdens healthcare providers today.
That’s why healthcare managers are eagerly embracing powerful software applications that can make sifting through mountains of data much easier. The abstraction process has become a vital element of the day-to-day management of any healthcare facility. Thus, software developers a putting a lot of time and effort to producing ever-more efficient and easier-to-use data abstraction systems.
Abstraction is powerful because it allows for the display of only essential data while hiding extraneous details. It filters out all the background noise, so to speak. This reduces the tedious task of sifting through huge amounts of information so that only the information needed for a specific task can be found quickly and easily.
It’s also fascinating to note that abstraction software is now being customized to fit the needs of specific sectors within the healthcare industry. For example, the data requirements of a mental health clinic will differ greatly from a primary care hospital.
