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Electronic Health Record (Ehr). The Use Of Technology Can

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Electronic Health Record (EHR) The use of technology can be seen everywhere in the world today. One area which has seen a big push to add technology is the healthcare industry. Healthcare has now progressed to the age of electronic health records (EHR). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the evolution of the EHR, including the EHR mandate and the role of the Affordable Care Act in this mandate. It will discuss the EHR plan at Hackettstown Medical Center (HMC) to include the progress HMC has made with the mandate. This paper will discuss meaningful use and HMCs status with meaningful use. Lastly, the paper will define the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and what HMC is doing to prevent HIPAA violations. …show more content…

I spoke with the Director of Informatics, Dorothy Vanderweil, to learn how our hospital addressed the implementation of an EHR. Dorothy was able to tell me how they assessed readiness, planned their approach, selected a certified EHR, and conducted training and implementation of the EHR. HMC assessed the specific flow of each department. At the start, they discovered there were individual needs for each department. They then assessed which departments could consolidate to share work flow. They evaluated the need for training of individuals and found many staff could barely use a mouse. HMC determined which devices would best suited when documenting in the EHR, along with how many devices were needed. The planning then began and the decision was made to use the C5 tablet for documenting. Of course, they needed to know the cost involved with the procurement of these devices. Decisions were made as to how and what they wanted to be able to view and chart. Since they were moving from paper charting there was no data integration to be concerned about. They formulated a plan for training including the adoption of super users for extra support during the first few months of going live. They selected Cerner as the EHR system to implement. Once all staff were trained and physicians as well, a decision was made to go live. By January 2010 HMC was ready and implemented the EHR certified system Cerner. Go live was very well planned with extra staff

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