Electronic Health Records in Small Practices Essay

In a healthcare world that operates on stringent budgets and margins, we begin to see the need for a higher capacity healthcare delivery system. This in turn puts pressure on the healthcare organizations to ensure higher standards of patient care, and compliance with the reform provisions. However, these are the harsh realities of today’s healthcare environment, a setting in which value does not always equal quality. The use of technology can help to amend some of this by providing higher capacity care without compromising quality; this can be done with the use of such technology as electronic health records (EHRs). This paper will aim to address how EHRs influence healthcare today by expanding upon topics such as funding sources, reimbursement methods, economic factors, socioeconomic factors, business influences, and cost containment.

The SWOT analysis will focus on the organizations and their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Organizations will have to face challenges, but how they recover and cope with them is important. The SWOT implies that the implementation of EHR faces some challenges of improving the safety, cost, Lack of System Integration, and productivity of patient care. Legal compliance/regulations are still a problem facing the healthcare industry as they assure security of information. The investment in the EHR is a key area when addressing these concerns because of the access of healthcare supply chains increase in workflow and efficiency. Hence, the implementation of EHR requires a level of data within the system by a

The purpose of this paper is to review and summarize the literature on the pros and cons of electronic health record systems. This paper describes the many benefits of electronic health record systems, which include but are not limited to, less paperwork, increased quality of care, financial incentives, and increased efficiency and productivity. Organizational outcomes and societal benefits are also addressed. Despite the tremendous amount of benefits, studies in the literature highlight potential disadvantages of electronic health record systems. These disadvantages include privacy and security concerns, identity theft, data loss, financial issues, and changes in workflow, involving a temporary loss of productivity. Preventative measures that can be taken are addressed as well. Overall, people believe that the benefits of electronic health records can be realized when they are used correctly, and proper measures are taken to reduce any potential drawbacks.

Hence, EHR 's are inherently complex amalgamations of diverse subsystems targeted toward varied users. The stakeholders are the users and must have a role in implementing any IT or EHR system into its work flow. An EHR can be customized to accommodate any environment depending on the level of expertise of the vendor and how long they have been in the business of creating an optimum system that 's customized to fit the organizations needs. For the most part, EHR 's must be designed for efficient, error free use. Ideally, an EHR is a system that encompass all the subsystems that make a hospital meet "meaningful use" criteria to acquire incentives for adopting EHR into practice. In the next five years, EHR adoption will no longer be a luxury, it will be a "MUST". EHR 's and other health information technology will be a necessity to practice medicine (econsultant.com, 2010). Rather than purchase several standalone systems, it would behoove one , in my opinion , to purchase an EHR that would satisfy all the needs of the stakeholders, the physician , nurses and other hospital staff and all parties involved in the tertiary practice too. Although LWMS 's budget is not large enough to accommodate the full cost of implementing an EHR,

In the recent years, EHR implementation has been one of the biggest change that occurred in the health care delivery system. The adoption of EHR system which aims to improve the quality of healthcare, however, has met a lot of issues and barriers that are detrimental to its success. Thus, for any healthcare organization to achieve a favorable outcome after the EHR implementation, numerous factors have to be examined. Merrill (2010) has listed down the top ten factors for a successful EHR adoption. It includes right leadership, shared vision, right culture, governance, physicians, nurses and key stakeholders are engaged early and accountable to lead the clinical transformation, resources, clinical content standardization, realistic timelines and expectations, effective training and communication plan, and right vendor partnership relationship.

Over the previous eight years, there has been a significant investment of private and public funds to upsurge the adoption of Electronic health records (EHRs) across the nation. The extensive adoption and “meaningful use” of electronic health records is a national priority. EHRs come in various forms and can be utilized in distinct organizations, as interoperating systems in allied health care units, on a regional level, or nationwide. The benefit of utilizing an EHR depends heavily on provider’s uptake on technology. Benefits related to electronic health records are numerous and may have clinical, organizational and societal outcomes. However, challenges in implementing electronic health records has attained some attention, the implementation

Besides identifying the objectives required to qualify for meaningful use, we must also consider the Ambulatory care practice’s key goals of streamlining registration, billing and improving the patient record documentation process. The project team should diagram and process map the current as well as the new proposed work flow to determine their specific needs and define objectives. When considering an EHR vendor, it is suggested that the Ambulatory care practice be able to demo the product with specific scenarios applicable to the

This article describes The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act’s (HITECH) “meaningful use” objective to create a nationwide system of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in order to improve patient safety, quality of care, privacy and security. The authors point out that during the first two years of an EHR implementation, clinicians and hospitals must meet certain requirements in order to qualify for federally funded incentive payments totaling up to $107,750 per clinician. This incentive is meant to ease the financial challenges smaller practices might face as the United States works toward a more technically collaborative information care system, EHRs promise to provide.

Resistance towards EHR systems tends to run high among physicians. The increase in the adoption of EHR in health systems has its challenges and concerns. Many physicians complain of negative impact on workflow, productivity disruption, and most importantly the physician-patient relationship. Earnest et al. (2004) concluded that physicians’ had initially thought information technology would be an obstacle to their workflow. Also, federal mandates with deadlines have created an environment where many physician practices have adopted an EHR strictly for compliance without any thought to the ongoing needs of the system (Porter, 2015). The EHRs that were quickly brought to market have been the source of ongoing frustrations and issues since they had the sole purpose of meeting

Getting successful universal EHR is not just technology selection, implementation question it needs to address many other aspects such as physician’s acceptance, policy/laws, incentives, security, and privacy and training issues before we can concentrate or focus on technology selection and implementations. The ecosystem should be ready with all these critical elements addressed only then successful EHR implementation can sustain in US. First and foremost there is a need to have consistency around the state/federal and HIPPA regulations which defines security and privacy issues in US. Due to conflicting requirements in these regulations mass acceptance of any medical system/technology cannot be effectively done. Second biggest issue for universal EHR adoption is the acceptance of EHR by physician’s communities. The benefits of EHR has been identified and acknowledged by medical communities at large however the rate of adoption and use after implementation is sluggish. The biggest common contributor for implementation, design and use of EHR systems is physician. Physicians should be properly trained and emphasis on continual education should also be placed through continuing education credits. Unless small physician office (stand-alone offices) buy-in the adoption of EHR no matter what technology and processes we have in place, EHR won’t be universally accepted and the entire benefit and value associated with EHR can be realized with universal acceptance of EHR. Thus need for

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).

An Electronic Health Record is a computerized form of a patient’s medical chart. These records allow information to be readily available to authorized providers during a patient’s encounter with the healthcare system. These systems do not only contain medical histories, current medications and insurance information, they also track patients’ diagnoses, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images and lab tests/results (source). The fundamental aspect of EHRs is that they are able to share a patient’s information quickly across service lines and even between different healthcare organizations. Information is at the fingertips of lab techs, primary care physicians, pharmacies, clinics, etc. The

EHR is rapidly growing in technology today. Some facilities have EHR and some are not fully functioning EHR system. I will explain the top three major barriers that have impeded more facilities from having a fully functioning EHR system?

Choosing to adopt the electronic health record (EHR) system requires planning and gaining knowledge about vendors in order to make an evidence-based decision before the selection and implementation process (Gleason, November/December 2014). It can eliminate the use of unnecessary technology and services that have created risk management and quality issues. With the EHR adoption, it can bring challenges and opportunities to existing processes by reducing costs and improving the efficiency for healthcare organizations like Bethany Place in order to inhere in operating more effectively in an effort of increasing the quality of care provided to the patient to achieve better medical outcomes (Cascardo, March/April 2014).

The problem in this scenario is the failure of the EHR system the Quinbery General Hospital implemented into their system. The screens were cluttered, difficult to use, and do not have data quality built in. More importantly the system did not meet the Condition of Participation, state licensing, or HIPAA requirements. The hospital staff was not properly trained to use the software. Physician s training was a demonstration at the quarterly medical staff meeting. Nursing and other staff were given 1 hour of training, which they learned only 3 weeks prior to implementation when the new system was announced at a department meeting.