Ehr Players In Health Care Case Study

Use of an EHR presents major opportunities for the compromise of patient’s personal health information (PHI). The facility must ensure proper safe guards are implemented and functioning properly at all times. Employees need to be educated on the safety measures to prevent breach of patient confidential health records. Privacy breaches can result from misuse or improper storage of PHI by the healthcare professional, by third party payers, or by lack of proper encryption in the EHR system itself (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2014). The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a law that holds healthcare facilities and professionals accountable for keeping PHI confidential, patients to control

Although the EHR is still in a transitional state, this major shift that electronic medical records are taking is bringing many concerns to the table. Two concerns at the top of the list are privacy and standardization issues. In 1996, U.S. Congress enacted a non-for-profit organization called Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This law establishes national standards for privacy and security of health information. HIPAA deals with information standards, data integrity, confidentiality, accessing and handling your medical information. They also were designed to guarantee transferred information be protected from one facility to the next (Meridan, 2007). But even with the HIPAA privacy rules, they too have their shortcomings. HIPAA can’t fully safeguard the limitations of who’s accessible to your information. A short stay at your local

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed by congress in 1996, and helps to ensure the privacy and security of Electronic Health Records (EHR's). By following the rules and regulations set forth under HIPAA, we can ensure the safety of patients' EHR's. We are responsible for protecting patients' records, and there are many measures we can take in order do this. Firstly, we must always keep patients' health information private. This means no discussing the records with people that are not authorized to know, and even then, we should only disclose the minimum necessary amount of information possible. For covered entities, we must designate a privacy and security officer to ensure the privacy

EHR was created to have a technical way to securely exchange private and personal medical health information in hopes to improve the quality of care, decrease medical errors, limiting paper use, reduction of health care cost, and increasing a person access to affordable health care. A mandate was created for EHR stating that health records can be accessible to all facilities with patients having the capability to access their own health records at any time. Ameliorating the quality and convenience of care given to a patient, allow for cost saving measures, engage the patient and family to participate in their care, improve accuracy of medical diagnosis, and enhance the efficiency of the overall outcome of the patients’ health.

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).

Health care agencies invest large sums of capital into EMR and in addition, rely upon reimbursement from the Health IT system (for example Medicare and Medicaid). According to Hurdle et al., (2007), the American Medical Informatics Association [AMIA] Code of Ethics, “patients have the right to know about the existence of electronic records containing personal biomedical data” (p. 391). In addition a patient has the right to expect that “biomedical data are maintained in a safe, reliable, secure, and confidential environment that is consistent with applicable law, local policies, and accepted informatics processing standards” (p. 392).

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

It is essential that health care researchers and/or managers abide by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) before sharing any patient health information to the public. The Privacy Rule under HIPPA will permit the sharing of health information without patient permission for payment, treating, and health care operations, and other specified purposes (Koontz, 2015). In addition, the Security Rule under HIPPA is designed to ensure that patient health information is protected from the unauthorized disclosure and access (Koontz, 2015). After all, the increase in health information technology makes it easier for researchers to obtain patient health data (Largent, Joffe, & Miller, 2011). However, the health care researcher

Healthcare companies always be in a myth that their business agreements will protect in case of a breach but unfortunately that is myth It’s essential for third party vendors to fully realize they are part of HIPAA regulations, they are not allowed to view healthcare data. To ensure vendors will not impose data risk it’s better to educate third party vendors, and. the HIPAA`s business associate agreement (BAA) rule for all relationships this agreement must be signed by third party vendor. The BAA maintains electronic information of all patients, if they fail to do so it is advisable

In today’s health care industry providing quality patient care and avoiding harm are the foundations of ethical practices. However, many health care professionals are not meeting the guidelines or expectations of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) or obeying the organizations code of ethics policies, especially with the use of electronic medical records (EMR). Many patients fear that their personal health information (PHI) will be disclosed by hackers or unauthorized users. According to Carel (2010) “ethical concerns shroud the

Dr. Kemp defines an electronic medical record (EMR) as “the digital version of a paper chart that contains all of a patients ' medical history from one practice” (Kemp, 2014). He also differentiates between the use of the term electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR). An EHR is more “comprehensive” than an EMR. It allows for data sharing across multiple practices. The use of both EMRs and EHRs has gained in notoriety in the last decade. And it appears that the use of these two terms is interchangeable. The idea of data sharing and having one’s health records at the click of a button is highly appealing. While there are several ethical implications to explore when dealing with computerized charting, the objective for this research review will focus primarily on three interesting concepts: autonomy, finance, and privacy, as it relates to information technology.

Physicians use of EHR at Sutter Health created a positive impact especially in communication with regards to a patient’s condition or an order, which used to be a challenge to interpret due to illegible handwriting and unstandardized phrase. Furthermore, Epic has an integrated program for medication ordering which provides suggested dosing, route, and frequency, as well as alerts for possible allergic reaction. Additionally, the use of voice recognition software for progress notes dictation in EHR saved most of the physicians’ time, and the tools available for references on clinical practice guidelines are conveniently linked in the Epic program.

informed consent is impossible unless the decision makers have appropriate and relevant information. This means that patients must not only have access to information about proposed treatment modalities but also to their very own records. When these records are in EHR form, this means that they must have access to their EHRs as well. Service providers must structure their services in such a way as to accommodate newly emerging patient rights [3].

The department of Health and Human Services protects and guides the health and well being of individuals here in America (Thacker, 2014). They fulfill these duties providing Americans with adequate and efficient health and human services and monitoring services designed to increase the efficiency of care in the health system (Thacker, 2014). One of the services being monitored by the department of Health and Human Services is the electronic health record system, which carries private and vital information of patient’s health record enabling all eligible participating health workers access to these records (Thacker, 2014). A breach of the protective health information of patients in a health organization creates chaos as these are against the health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA) law (Thacker, 2014). Hence, measure will have to be put in place to determine what caused the breach and how to rectify it to ensure the breach never happens again (Thacker, 2014).

When implementing a new EHR, departments need to have a plan in place when the system causes change to the process and design within the organization. Often times, regulations and policies need to be changed to coincide with a new system in place, such as a new EHR program (University of Scranton, 2017). A way to mitigate this situation is to start at the federal level’s regulations and work down the scope from there. This will guarantee that mandatory rules are still being followed and there is successful transition into future policies. Additionally, funding will be crucial to the organization’s ability to have a new EHR system. Each department needs to ensure they are properly tracking funds and that they can afford to upgrade.