EHR In Healthcare

The electronic health record (EHR) is a digital record of a patient’s health history that may be made up of records from many locations and/or sources, such as hospitals, providers, clinics, and public health agencies. The EHR is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has built-in safeguards to assure patient health information confidentiality and security. (Huston, 2013)

Electronic health records (EHR) are health records that are generated by health care professionals when a patient is seen at a medical facility such as a hospital, mental health clinic, or pharmacy. The EHR contains the same information as paper based medical records like demographics, medical complaints and prescriptions. There are so many more benefits to the EHR than paper based medical records. Accuracy of diagnosis, quality and convenience of patient care, and patient participation are a few examples of the

EHRs have also changed healthcare by increasing productivity. Now health care professionals are not having to order scan or test multiple times due to results not being able to be located. One additional way that EHRs have changed the healthcare industry is by increase patient satisfactions. Patients like that their healthcare providers are easily up to date on the facts of their health information. Healthcare IT is now considered as a essential factor of a high-quality healthcare system (Wager, Lee, Glaser, 2013).

Another beneficial feature of EHR systems is that they allow different authorized professionals to access your information from anywhere at any point in time. If a patient checks into the Emergency Room, is moved to Radiology for imaging, then moved to Orthopedics for surgery and finally placed in a bed for recovery, each individual throughout that process will have access to that patient’s medical records without having to communicate with each department. This fosters an

Considering the great advances in technology, EHRs prior to January 2009 were underperforming. Often the EHR simply resembled the provider’s unique approach to healthcare. The technology existed, however the healthcare industry was not ready embracing the capabilities of the EHR. EHRs require standardization and each hospital had its own version of practicing medicine. It became apparent healthcare providers were going to continue business as usual; therefore the benefits linked to the capabilities of the EHR went unrealized. Indeed it is interesting the amount of time and legal maneuvers it took to spark the use of EHRs in hospitals. It was apparent government intervention to jump-start the EHR was inevitable. On January 9, 2009 passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health legislation (HITECH) opened the gateway to technology and implementation of the EHR.

Having a clear idea of what the EHR system needs to do has a further benefit for practices in that it allows them to better compare vendors. Of course any good EHR system will comply with regulations such as HIPAA and ARRA. Having a clear set of objectives helps practices when it comes to comparing products and carrying out cost/benefit analyses. Following the new system’s installation, practices must continue

One pro of the EHR is that it makes accessing patient information faster since you can easily bring it up on a computer as opposed to going through physical copies. This allows patients to be dealt with properly according to their records.  While the EHR has many benefits,  the one pitfall is that since all this data is made so accessible,  patient information is vulnerable to attack by hackers and those who misuse their authorized access to such information. This puts patients at risk of this information were to be exposed. This is a considerable risk when patients' lives are at stake. EHRs can improve patient health literacy by making information readily assessable to patients to help them make well informed health care decisions. It also empowered patients to take control in managing some clinical conditions that requires skills needed to take care of themselves (Watson,

The passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) Act “encouraged healthcare organizations and providers to adopt and effectively utilize certified electronic health records (EHRs)” (Conrad, Hanson, Hansenau, & Stocker-Schneider, 2012, p. 443). In addition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) instituted Meaningful Use (MU) as a form of “incentive programs that governs the use of EHRs and allow eligible providers and hospitals to earn incentive payments by meeting specific criteria” (Yoder-Wise, 2014, p. 195). Consequently, as cited by Berfeld and Parker (2010) “Adoption of computers in care and an electronic medical record (EMR) within healthcare organizations is no longer an option, but a necessity for safe and cost effective provision of care” (p. 17).

There are a number of single site studies at hospitals which have given evidence of particular functions of these EMRs including clinical decision or even computerized physician order entry which would then improve on spending of health IT and is linked to the improvement of patient safety along with higher quality of care and reduced costs (Kim & Lee, 2015). Health IT could thus improve quality of care through the reduction of the number and size of the malpractice cases and eventually lower the insurance premiums. If a health care facility is able to show to the malpractice insurers that it has instituted the right processes and technologies, then the malpractice insurer assumes financial risk with an expectation that the investment of the hospital when it comes to processes and technologies will allow the hospital to avoid particular mistakes and intercept errors before harming of

First off, it was really amazing to see all the different types of errors that can occur while using an EHR. Quite frankly, I found both articles extremely interesting and educational. In the first article, Bowman states that one problem that can occur while using an EHR has to do with the software system itself. She explains how software systems can have flaws that put the patient’s information in jeopardy because these systems can be acquire bugs and viruses which causes the patient’s information to be lost and/or deleted (Bowman, 2013). Other problems derived from EHR’s are due to the lack of user friendly features which make interfaces difficult to use. These type of issues can mislead the user to enter wrong patient data into the system

Electronic health record is very important in the heath care industry in many ways. The EHR in health care is build on the health record content. Also, health records contain clinical and legal information in a patients future health care. They are also required to keep track of their patients health record and other body requiments. Using EHR will take longer to process patients and their information. For example, after the patient check up, the physician might typically write some notes down, then pass the information to a staff member for transcription.

Hoping to encourage health care organizations to move toward health information technology (HIT) and electronic health record (EHR) adoption faster, the federal government allocated more than $14.5 billion dollars in Meaningful Use incentives in the 2009 stimulus. On the surface, adoption numbers seem to suggest the stimulus was successful. Today, four out of five hospitals utilize EHRs, and almost as many office-based physicians (78%) have adopted some form of EHR system, according to 2013 stats released by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). However, transforming the healthcare industry is more complicated than simply improving adoption rates.

When a clinic decides to upgrade from paper records to electronic health records, they are making the work load easier not only for the doctors, but for the nursing staff, front office staff, and billers and coders. Having EHRs connects not only your regular doctors, but any that you might visit while on vacation, or any specialist that your doctor may want advice from. EHRs also help patients stay connected to their charts and updated on any changes.

The Electronic Health Records (EHR) includes the patient health information. For example, diagnoses, lab results, the patient medical history, process notes, patient demographics, vital signs, medications. Is entered in the EHR computer software at the provider's office. Its a patient health information system. Use to send information to other providers. It includes all personnel involved in patient care.

Another big plus of the EHRs is that studies have shown that it has helped providers improve accuracy of diagnoses and health outcomes (Couch, 2008). For example, nurses could have reliable access to patients complete health information and have pictures which would help with whatever problem they might encounter. EHR doesn’t just keep patients medications and allergies, it also check for problems whenever a new medication is prescribed and it also alerts the nurse of potential problems (Couch, 2008). EHRs can also tell the nurse if potential safety problems occur, which helps them avoid more serious consequences for patients, which can lead to better outcomes. The EHRs can also help nurses quickly identify and correct operational problems, which compared to the paper-based setting, those kinds of problems would be more difficult to correct. It can also help