OBGYN practices have unique needs including billing requirements and charting. Therefore, it is crucial to invest in an EHR system that is tailored to your workflow!

Explore the most important EHR features for OBGYN practices below, and see how they can benefit both healthcare providers and patients.

1. Flexible Templates

A common complaint from a lot of OBGYN practices is templates. They’re too rigid. They don’t contain the common procedures OBGYN practices need. And if they even are customizable, the process requires too much time and training to set up.

Other common complaints include not having templates at all or not having any help available when it comes to customization. An EHR that doesn’t learn your charting style is unintuitive and eats at your face-to-face time with patients.

At an OBGYN practice, you want an EHR that has easily creatable templates including the most common obstetric and gynecologic conditions and exams. This baseline allows healthcare providers to efficiently document patient encounters, including prenatal care, family planning, menopausal care, and more. Customizable templates that can be modified to specific patient populations and individual provider preferences are also highly valuable.

2. Obstetric charting and pregnancy tracking

For OBGYN practices, meaningful obstetric charting and pregnancy tracking capabilities are essential. Let’s break down a few key, charting-specific EHR needs.  

Inclusive display

A worthwhile EHR should offer an efficient display. You only have a few minutes with your patient, and you want to make them count.

From any screen, you should see key obstetrical information that includes the patient’s:

• estimated delivery date
• gestational age
• prior pregnancies
• chosen hospital
• high-risk information and more

An EHR designed for OBGYN should enable providers to easily monitor and document the progress of pregnancies including prenatal visits, fetal growth, maternal health, and delivery planning.

Additionally, the ability to track and manage high-risk pregnancies, fetal ultrasounds, and gestational age calculations is crucial for delivering comprehensive obstetric care.

Prenatal flow sheets

Prenatal flow sheets should be built into an EHR for OBGYN. These allow providers to track specific bodily metrics for pregnant patients as well as the fetus from conception to parturition.

Prenatal flow sheets look at metrics including:

• Expected delivery date
• Last menstrual period
• Pre-pregnancy weight
• Pre-pregnancy blood pressure
• Gestational age (GA)
• Weight
• Blood pressure
• Urine
• Fetal movement (FM)
• Pre-term labor (PTL Sx)
• Fetal heart rate (FHR)
• Fundal height (F. Ht)
• Cervical statistics
• Presentation (Pres)
• Edema

Does your EHR have prenatal flow sheets?

Prenatal record report

Does you EHR have prenatal record reports such as an antepartum form or ACOG report?

If not, it should!

Antepartum records, also known as prenatal records, are independent medical documents that encompass new information, summarized details, and metadata from a patient's primary medical record, all following the patient's pregnancy. They have been in extensive use for more than a century.

Fast, flexible charting

Speed is a must when it comes to charting in your EHR. Bad charting = provider burnout.

Your EHR should cut down on charting times with minimal clicking and scrolling. Better yet, find an EHR that lets you choose from a list of comprehensive OBGYN-specific vocabulary, swiftly document follow-up visits in less than a minute, and effortlessly create patient notes using your preferred method of typing or speech to text.

A superior EHR will allow the use of touchscreen to navigate and document with options that include structured findings, typing and voice recognition, or shared documentation. 

3. Integrated clinical decision support and clinical alerts

To support evidence-based care and patient safety, OBGYN practices should prioritize an EHR system that offers integrated decision support and clinical alerts.

This includes features such as drug interaction alerts, clinical guidelines, and reminders for preventive care and screenings. Additionally, the EHR should facilitate the tracking of immunizations, prenatal testing, and other routine care measures to ensure that patients receive comprehensive and timely care.

CompuGroup Medical knows that it's hard to keep track of all the necessary visits to keep patients healthy and on track with their care plans. That’s why our leading EHR, CGM APRIMA, offers highly visible reminders that tell you, the provider, when a care gap needs to be addressed such as a breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, or maternal depression screening.

4. OBGYN-specific billing and reporting

OBGYN practices require detailed and accurate billing processes to account for various services such as prenatal care, ultrasounds, genetic testing, and gynecological procedures. Additionally, providers must navigate insurance complexities and unique reporting requirements that can cause denied claims and slow-downs if not handled properly.

To fully support the OBGYN specialty, your EHR vendor should be there to help you navigate the world of practice management (PM) and to offer billing aid and services.

Effective billing and reporting systems are essential for OBGYN practices to maintain financial health, deliver quality care, and meet the specific needs of their patient population.

Does you practice have:

• Specific coding systems such as CPT® and ICD-10 to identify the correct procedure and diagnosis codes? Are you staying up-to-date with latest coding updates, policy changes, and compliance requirements?
• Detailed documentation abilities for comprehensive patient records including prenatal visits, ultrasounds, and delivery details to ensure compliance with billing and coding guidelines?
• A solid understanding of billing rules and regulations specific to OBYGN?

You will need to maximize reimbursements and minimize claim rejections to run a truly prosperous OBGYN practice. Need help with billing? Unlike what you can find from other EHR vendors, our award-winning team at ARIA RCM Services can manage any part of your billing process, from aging AR to complete, end-to-end billing.

ARIA operates as an extension of your team, effectively taking claim denials, claim management, and staffing concerns off of your plate.

5. Patient engagement tools and web portals

By getting patients more actively involved in their own healthcare, it reduces the risk of comorbidities, hospitalization, and more. A complete patient engagement system will foster provider-patient communication and give patients a more convenient way to pay their bills. This means faster pay days for your practice!

When considering an EHR for your OBGYN practice, look for features such as:

• Secure messaging
• Appointment scheduling
• Patient access to personal health records
• Educational resources

All of this can improve patient satisfaction and health outcomes. Appointment scheduling, in particular, can help you reduce office no-shows and back-fill missed appointments.

Choosing the best EHR for OBGYN

The most important EHR features for OBGYN practices are those that address the unique needs of women's healthcare including comprehensive women's health templates, obstetric charting and pregnancy tracking, integrated decision support and clinical alerts, interoperability and care coordination, and patient engagement tools and portals.

By investing in an EHR system with these essential features, OBGYN practices can improve patient and practice health!

Bonus: Integrated solutions for OBGYN

Sometimes less is more! With an electronic health record, practice management system, clearinghouse, and even billing services all provided by different vendors, can you really expect cohesive, accountable support and communication? What about accountability?

Consolidate with one trusted vendor to boost your services, strengthen your bottom line, and simplify your own, internal administration.

A leader in e-health, CompuGroup Medical is on a mission to synchronize healthcare through integrated EHR & PM, lab management software, RCM billing services, telehealth, EDI, and more.

Find one comprehensive solution, all under one roof. At CompuGroup Medical, we build bridges between physicians, health insurances, laboratories, rehab and care facilities, and hospitals to ensure patients receive optimal care.

Take the first step. Contact us today and ask about using CGM APRIMA as your OBGYN EHR.

Sources cited

The Transition from Paper to Digital: Lessons for Medical Specialty Societies - PMC (nih.gov)

Top 10 Must-Have Features for an Effective OB-GYN EHR (prognocis.com)

The OBGYN Software You've Been Waiting For | ModMed

Important Features of EHR Software in OB/GYN Clinics - Harris Ambulatory Care Enterprise

EHR For Ob/Gyn (adsc.com)