EHR Adoption Task Force: A Case Study

In evaluating the plans of the Leonard Williams Medical Center (LWMC) and its subsidiary business entity, the Williams Medical Services (WMS), the overall objective is to implement new technology in the form of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system in order to streamline workflow, provide safe and quality care for patients and remain competitive with other healthcare facilities in providing these components with the use of advanced technology. The implementation of an EMR is the desire of the physician group, WMS, who refuses to listen to

Despite some barriers and challenges of EHR adoption, transitioning our office to paperless has become inevitable. Timely adoption of EHR would help our clinic receive incentives, merge paper records into the new database, and better organize patient information. In order to ensure the most seamless implementation possible, meticulous planning will be a must.

The author, Judy Murphy, focuses mostly on how the government played a huge role in the adoption of EHRs into the medical world. Murphy brings up George Bush’s statement in his 2004 State of the Union address and Obama’s push to make that happen, but this is just scratching the surface of government interventions. The author discussed the money allocated by the acts such as “The Stimulus Bill” or “The Recovery Act” to help fuel the economy and rescue a struggling health care industry. She states how acts were passed, and how there were rules set in place to be followed by hospitals and providers around the United States. The article describes how the government is basically forcing these facilities to adopt EHRs by using a reward

Muhammed H. (2015) conducted a study to determine the relationship between EHRs and patient safety. According to the researcher, EHRs are healthcare applications that digitize patient information and clinical workflows. It may be considered as a data repository that stores patient data, and assists providers by providing reference information and recommendations for care. Furthermore it enables providers to electronically place orders and consolidate clinical notes across hospital departments. The results showed that about 70% of hospitals in PA adopted advanced EHRs since 2012 and there has been a 27% decline in patient safety events

During our electronic health record (EHR) implementation at my organization I was tasked with leading a team that designed and implement new workflows in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). This required the staff to abandon a nine-page flow-sheet, and migrate to all electronic

Legendary Health Center (LHC) is a general health center serving the residents of Eastern Ohio. We accept patients of ages, ethnicities, with or without insurance for more than 20 years. Legendary Health Center encompasses four counties, Clermont, Brown, Adams, and Highland. LHC employs 10 providers, three midlevel providers and 50 staff

9) Booz Allen Hamilton (Canada), Rand (US) and HIMSS Analytics (US) have completed high level analyses of the costs and benefits to be derived from electronic health records. To what degree can the benefits be truly realized in Canada?

“The HIPPA Privacy Rule gives you rights over your own health information, regardless of its form” (Rodriguez, L, Dec,2011). Whether the medical record is paper or electronic form, we must take measures to protect it. HIPAA requires covered providers to appoint a policy and security officer. This person(s) or employee(s) will be responsible for creating, documenting and maintaining the privacy and security practices/policies that meet HIPAA requirements.

The final step in the process of implementing a nationwide EHR system is Stage 3, which is set to be in full development by 2018. On February 14, 2014 the ONC meaningful use workgroup submitted recommendations for the implementation of Stage 3 meaningful use incentive program to the Health IT policy Committee, however their findings have not been published to date. This will result in the Policy Committee approving recommendations in mid 2015 the Health and Human Services Department to develop the final rules. There are several proposals in place but the leading one that has emerged would have hospitals and providers use a six priority decision matrix that would include preventative care, disease management,

Prof. Harn, I definitely feel that all the players in healthcare, including HIT vendors, healthcare providers, healthcare organizations, insurance providers, health departments, etc., are all morally and ethically responsible for the patients that these tools are being used for. Since these products are being used to document and provide care, they can lead to serious safety events, the unintended disclosure of confidential information, and contribute to the patient-provider relationship just as easily as the actions taken by individuals in providing patient care.

Focusing on the outcome and not the process of the outcome, a needs assessment is a systematic approach to the electronic record adoption project scenario. The outcome of a needs assessment given scenario is the adoption of an Electronic Health Record system by the health care organization. For the site to adopt and accept implementation of an electronic health record system, benefits have to be clearly outlined and presented to the site staff. The staff must be convinced that the core functions of implementation of an electronic health records system is management of patient health information and data. Transitioning from an analogous patient records too EHR system, patient information and knowledge becomes immediately accessible and navigable by medical personnel. Electronic Health Record system would also provide the staff immediate access to testing result and CPOEs. Electronic health record CPOEs eliminates the self-evident sometimes ineligible physician order. Eliminating the time from when the physician prescribes the order to the time the procedure is performed is a core benefit to electronic health record application. Finally the staff needs to be informed that one of the outcomes of an electronic health record application system is decision support. Prevention, drug prescription, diagnosis, and disease management are functional EHR decision support functionality applications (“Comprehensive Needs Assessment,” ed.gov, 2001).

I had a chance to talk with Dr. Benjamin Maughan who is a clinical fellow at Johns Hopkins medical institution. Dr. Maughan was fully aware that hospital is currently using Epic as an EHR system. In his opinion, EHR improves the quality and safety of patient care by having any patient information available to healthcare providers. He had to emphasize a downtime scenario where he had to use paper charts that vastly affected the quality of patient care.

EHR and Biomedical decision-making link has benefited the health industries. It gives the pharmacy tech a sense of comfort and security that the dosage prescribed by the doctor is correct because it is electronic data instead of written document. Electronic health records allow patients to participate in the caregiving process, which is important for chronic conditions like asthma. Better decision is made which decreases costs due to medical errors and increases the services that facilities can provide for patients.

In the past, few years the technology in the healthcare has grown a lot. Currently there are developments going on about the functionality and effectiveness of the electronic health record (EHR). There appears to be a couple of problems regarding to the use of the EHR in the healthcare. These bottlenecks relate to the reliability and quality of the given information. Meander Thuiszorg (region Heerlerheide-North), a home care company, switched over to the electronic health record one year ago. The change from the paper records to the electronic records was a big step for most of the employees. Currently the EHR is not kept current in the detachment of Heerlerheide-City.

Any introduction of a new technology to an organization and a provider changes the dynamics of their workflows (Asan, 2017). Additionally, changes to the workflows could either have a negative or positive experience to the end-users. Hence, it is critical to document workflows before implementing clinical information systems to mitigate any issues once the systems start to operate.