EMAR, or Electronic MAR, stands for Electronic Medication Administration Records. In some states, it is referred to as EMOR (Electronic Medication Observation Record). Senior Care facilities, such as Assisted Living Facilities, Group Homes, Memory Care Facilities, CCRC’s and Skilled Nursing Facilities typically record the ‘passing’ of meds (MedPass) to residents as and when such medications are due. This used to be recorded on a paper record, called the MAR (Medication Administration Record). However, maintaining the paper MAR is a lot of work, especially when new meds are prescribed for a resident, or a med is discontinued in the middle of the month. In addition, these paper records were maintained in a medication binder that needed manual review and maintenance every month.
EMAR, or the electronic, computerized version of this paper MAR, eliminates a lot of this manual work while increasing the accuracy of the medication records. Ideally, the EMAR software system is integrated with your pharmacy so all the medication data flows over automatically from the pharmacy every time a med is filled. This greatly increases accuracy and decreases medication errors. Furthermore, when you are able to use barcode scanning with your EMAR, that ensures that you don’t give the wrong med to the resident by accident, as the software cross checks the med against the resident when you scan the barcode. All of this reduces the work for the facility, improves care and reduces risk.
EMAR, EHR and Operations software is critical in your marketing efforts to demonstrate your commitment to resident health and earn more business from the emerging silver Tsunami of retirees needing help with activities of daily living (ADL). This rush of retirees has already started, with an estimated 10,000 baby boomers retiring EVERY DAY! Most of them at some point will need to live in care homes, but can not afford the luxury fees that many charge. So there is a growing segment of the Senior Care space that is focused on serving this segment, with a lower cost per resident each month. Given the financial constraints that senior care facilities face, because of the growing need to keep the monthly fees low, we work to ensure that our software is very affordable and provides you with easier to use, better and more features, even as some competitors cut features and raise prices.
Our Assisted Living/Senior Care electronic MAR is intensely focused on ease of use and speed. We want a new user to be able to learn the software and administer meds with less than an hour of training. We pride ourselves on delivering a premium service at an affordable price, because we want to make sure that all of this is within reach of the smallest to the largest Senior care facility.