Ehr Error Studies

Today’s world in Health care Electronic health records are being utilized in every office. With that utilization of the electronic health records from your staff and physicians and patients, the reduction in mis-diagnoses is continuing to decrease as the years pass. Some would say that EHR is a continual migration path sometimes dictated by internal organizational issues. (Latour, 2009) A CIO would need to research and evaluate every option for her hospital staff. The hospital would do great to join the newly HIR organization to extend its ability to care for patients across the continuum of care (Latour, 2005) The whole purpose of the EHR system is to provide quality care by providing care to patients ensuring accuracy, comprehensiveness, data integrity, data security, and decreased medical errors within the patients chart and clinical side.

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

An electronic health record (EHR) defines as the permissible patient record created in hospitals that serve as the data source for all health records. It is an electronic version of a paper chart that includes the patient’s medical history, maintained by the provider over time, and may include all of the key administrative clinical data relevant to that persons care. Information that is readily available includes information such as demographics, progress notes, allergies, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data, & radiology reports. The intent of an EHR can be understood as a complete record of patient

Implementation of EHR shows improvement of quality of care by the nurses ability to access the patient chart at the bedside, decreasing the risk of wrong patient errors.

Adoption of EHR can derive a great amount of benefits in clinical outcomes such as patient safety and quality of care. Qualtiy of care can be measured with different dimensions such as patient safety, effectiveness, and efficiency. Patient safety is defined as ‘avoiding injuries to patients from the care that is intended to help them’(Menachemi and Collum, 2011, p. 49). Often times, lack of time can contribute to omission of asking patients important questions such as drug allergy information and confirming important patient identifiers such as addresses/phone numbers. Improvement of medication error is a well-noted benefit of EHR as seen in numerous researches. According to a study, researchers found that a CPOE system was contributory in reducing serious medication errors by 55% in the hospital setting (Bates, 1998). Many other studies have reported similar findings in patient safety improvement. When e-prescribing is used, prescriptions can be checked for any drug interactions with

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

A wave of medical errors and patient deaths caused by healthcare providers renewed the search for a viable EHR system in 2000. Electronic health records would allow "providers to make better decisions and provide better

These rewards serve as gratification and the offered initiatives contribute to the prevailing positive attitudes from the physicians toward EHRs. These benefits include improved patient safety and quality of care, the ability to reduce healthcare cost, and ultimately better patient health outcomes and satisfaction. According to Jamoom et al. (2013), having the ability to access the patient’s charts remotely, being warned to critical lab values and potential medication errors, and the systems’ ability to identify needed lab tests are all reported benefits of the EHR. Improved overall patient care, the ordering of less medical test due to the availability of lab results, and the ordering of more on-formulary medications are all advantages that physicians reported occurring due to the adoption of the EHRs. The adoption and implementation of the EHR has presented challenges for information technology. These benefits of the EHR outweigh the initial dissatisfaction of the physicians. For the adoption of EHR to be successful in the healthcare industry it is important that the physician’s outlook remain

EHRs have potential in recuperating patient safety. EHRs are efficient as they do not require doctors to use paper records, which in turn result in healthier individuals (Staggers, Weir and Phansalkar, 2008). Furthermore, Canada and many other countries around the globe have invested in EHRs due to the advantages for patient safety. Moreover, EHRs have its advantages, but there are also evident disadvantages, such as financial costs, patient safety, and medical errors (Sparnon and Marella,

The cons of an EHR are part of the driving force behind the model restricted from the need to integrate EHRs throughout the health system and share information with network of referring hospitals. However, this sharing of information is often not possible (EHR,2013). Finding a hospital partner that is willing to open the lines of communication is critical to the success. The cost associated with EHRs is often a deterrent. Not only must the provider pay for the physical hardware and/or software, the organization must also put forth a considerable dollar amount for setup, maintenance, training, IT support and system updates (EHR,2013). With EHRs, much more documentation is required of physicians before, during and after a patient visit. This has its pros and cons. For example, a benefit of more strong documentation is that it provides additional information for the coders that may justify a higher level of service being billed(EHR,2013).

There’s no denying that EHR has advanced the quality of healthcare by improving the way information is accessed and exchanged. But despite these advancements, errors, which were simply not tolerated in paper records, are numerous in EHRs. Because of this, electronic documentation tools have been developed in an effort to increase the quality of clinical documentation, enhance communication between healthcare providers, and improve delivery of care.

Therefore, several authors share some of the same ideas as to what some of the barriers faced during the transition to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and if these barriers still exist once the transition to a full EHR system is complete. Herrick, et al., 2010, states that currently, there is no hard-core evidence to support the argument that Electronic Health Record (EHRs) and Health Information Technology is the best route for health organizations to prevent errors. In fact, the use of such technology could potentially lead to errors if information incorrectly entered in the system and Haupt, 2011, statement that smart software could help to prevent life-threatening errors better when administering medicines. Whereas, Boonstra & Broekhuis, 2010, states from a physician point a view need the understanding of the possible barriers that faced during implementation of EHRs because there a tremendous amount of literature on the obstacles but no suggestion on how to resolve these barriers have not been viewed. Barriers such as, financial on great startup and ongoing cost, technical and time to train staff and how much knowledge do they have with computer skills and psychological when support needed from vendors, etc. It suggests that once those barriers have been ironed out and a plan has set in place, then the transition from paper documentation to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) may go a lot easier for the healthcare arena physician, nurses and administrative

According to The Healthcare Information and Management Systems EHR is considered a longitudinal electronic record of patient health information generated by one or more encounters in any care delivery setting( Kohli & Tan, 2016). The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) describes EHR as an electronic version of a patient’s medical history, that is maintained by the provider over time, and may include all of the key administrative clinical data relevant to that person’s care under a particular provider, including demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports (CMS.gov). The International

As patient information is readily available in the electronic record, it makes health care provider make better and quicker choices and decisions. These decisions can be based on evidence base care that is supported through data that is gathered from the patient’s records. EHR improves patient safety by providing access to information, eliminating gaps of communication among the different providers, decrease redundancy, and reduces duplication in testing. EHR has benefited health care and at the same time create positive outcomes for the nurses. Some of the positive outcomes for nurses are; comparison of previous to current data, improves documentation of the quality of care, allows recognition of the work done in measurable units by nurses, and reduces redundancy with baseline demographic data (Hebda & Czar, 2013). Data that is summarized through the EHR can evaluate performance management and look at quality issues. Along with those features, EHR can potentially increase efficiency, improved quality of care, standardize documentation, increase clinical workflow, and improved overall outcomes for

The quality depends on integrity, accuracy of health information, adoption of health information technology, and electronic medical records that would be vital in transforming the U.S health care system to one that is efficient and safer. Adoption of EMR has failed to achieve the benefit for which it was designed for, despite the promises of it improving quality of care and patient security. EMR errors results in data been lost or entered incorrectly, much efforts needs to be done to measure the occurrence of this errors determine the causes and get solutions.