Health Care Information Systems Analysis

The health care sector is impacted by numerous changes and challenges, such as increasing need for health care provision, changing demands from patients or rapidly evolving technologies. In the context of evolving technologies, the developments occur not only in the actual provision of the medical act, but also at the level of the complementary operations, such as health care information management.

As the national health care system transitions to the electronic health record (EHR), it is important to recall the impetus to this reform. Prior to the implementation of the electronic health record, the national health care system encountered many problems that impeded quality patient care. There was not a standardized formal structure with the process. Consequently, it lacked communication across disciplines and among providers and

But as noted previously, more is needed than standardizing these processes. Health care providers (physicians and hospitals) should embrace electronic health records (EHRs) and should integrate appropriate information from billing systems with clinical information (the recording and analysis of clinical services) from EHRs (Wikler et al., 2012; Cutler et al., 2012). To address concerns that occur due to accessing medical records, the secretary of health and human services could expand criteria under the Health information Technology for Economic and Clinical

The healthcare industry is in the midst of a major change from paper based medical record keeping to electronic medical record keeping. As part of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was passed (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 2014). HITECH is the U.S. Government’s first major contribution to the change from paper to electronic health information technology by setting meaningful use incentive program for Medicare and Medicaid providers that met certain requirements. Healthcare professionals that meet the meaningful use criteria will be awarded financially, and those that don’t meet the 2015 guideline will be penalized. We live in an electronic world of instant access to information and by adopting health information technology we give providers better and easier access to more information which in turn allows them to make a more informed diagnosis and treatment plan for the patient. The electronic health record (EHR) is part of the new information technology. According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (2014.), EHR’s provide many benefits such as improvement in the quality of patient care; improvement in the coordination of patient care; more accurate diagnosis and better outcomes; a higher level of patient participation in their own care; and cost savings for the practice

Thank you for mentioning health care IT system. As you stated, health IT system helps health care providers review patient's vital information, it also assists patients to be more informed with their health. As a patient and health care provider, I like to see my laboratory work-up and tests. The increased awareness will help me work toward a preventive solution. For example, if my cholesterol levels are borderline high, or my glucose is elevated, it will prompt me to find ways to prevent progression to diabetes. Staying on top of your health and keeping an open communication with your primary care physician will promote better outcomes and patient satisfaction.

More and more integrated hospitals and other providers are becoming prevalent in our community; two large systems in the Dallas Fort Worth area are Texas Health Resources and the Baylor Scott White systems. What exactly are these integrated hospital systems? An integrated healthcare system is one that through official agreements or ownership sets up a horizontal and vertical line of healthcare facilities and services to better deliver seamless healthcare to patients. An example to use is Texas Health Resources since its found in most corners of the Metroplex. With any large corporation and system comes confusion and other problems: such as regulatory obstacles, the complexity of operations, and unclear financial ownerships. Integrated healthcare systems appear at face value to be the solution to curbing the

The health plan means any individual or group plan that provides, or pays the cost of, medical care. The health care provider means a provider of medical or health services. Health care clearinghouse means a public or private entity, ("Covered entity (hipaa)," 2005).

Implementation of Healthcare Information Technology potentially reduces cost yet, remains a continuous challenge. The adoption of improved healthcare infrastructure is compelling and significant barriers remain such as technical issues, cost, concerns about privacy and confidentiality, system interoperability and lack of well trained staff to lead the process (Palvia, Love, Nemati, & Jacks, 2012).

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

Unfortunately, physician's perceptions are not objective outcome measures (Schenarts and Schenarts, 2012). It’s very dangerous the fact that providers rely on the electronic system to catch our errors. Furthermore, some of the most notable benefits of EHR include providers’ ability to access patients’ medical history almost anywhere, at any time. Nonetheless, the heavy reliance on health information technology is a major concern. It has the potential to cause harm to patients instead of the intended purpose of patient safety. Some examples of this include latent errors that do not manifest until they have already caused harm to the patient, or system failures which can cause a delay in time for healthcare professionals to review records thus, causing a delay in patient care. In addition, patient orders can be lost or miscommunicated. Healthcare providers rely on with confidence that the computer system will seamlessly promote the quality care of patients. According to Fiercehealthcare.com (2017), because of deficiencies in the eclinicalworks software, patients could not rely on the accuracy of their medical records. In addition, one patient was

The use of IT in the healthcare field has been a strategic focus for necessary improvement that stands to enable more cost effective, higher-quality, and far safer patient care according to the Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety (2003). The National quality forum conceptualized the idea of meaningful use to the nursing fraternity and believed that they were the most critical link in patient care and health delivery and hence technology tools of EHR would be best used by them The purpose of the electronic health records was to improve the health of population, coordination of care, safety improvement in patients undergoing critical and long term care, and patient and family engagement in timely access of

The one issue not addressed in this article is the fact that at this stage in EHRs most of those responsible for developing EHRs are people not familiar with healthcare, so they don’t quiet have the understanding of what is necessary. There is no denying how critical clinical documentation is to healthcare. According to Health Information Management Technology: An Applied Approach (pg120), “the documentation found in health records is crucial as evidence of services provided and the quality of those services.” This has become so important that many healthcare setting have initiated clinical documentation improvement programs. With a growing and ageing population in need of quality healthcare, timely and accurate clinical documentation is critical to a successful healthcare system. However, I think it is important for everyone to remember that these things take time, as stated in the article we’re still in the early days of EHRs, so as time goes on these problems are sure to get

Health technology information (health IT) is crucial to health care. Health IT is defined as the exchange of data information through an electronic system (HHS, 2017). The use of it will help reduce medical errors, enhance the quality of care, increase efficiency, reduce paperwork, and decrease unnecessary medical costs. However, to gain the most out of health IT, privacy and security standards must be all health organizations first priority. It is important that patients feel that their personal information is secured.

We are now on the technology highway of nursing profession with all the advances of caring for patients available. Healthcare Informatics (HI) allows all the disciplines to communicate the patient’s vital information, assess as you go and change the plan of care or make adjustments as needed. Chest pain accompanied by shortness of breath triggers a cascade of nursing assessments, which can be implemented immediately and relayed to the Emergency Department (ER) physician, cardiologist, pulmonologist, and radiologist within the first five minutes of the patient’s arrival to the emergency department. As the patient’s vitals signs, laboratory, and electrocardiogram (EKG) results are recorded, all the staff caring for the patient can view and

The health record has been around for many years, and it first started with a group of individuals in the 1920’s to realize that documenting health care data provided better quality care. Healthcare providers recognized that they were able to treat patients more accurately with a documented history of the patients. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that healthcare professionals started to venture out into the computerized healthcare technology. In the 90’s technology was making gains and healthcare continued to venture forward into the modern more computerized world of healthcare informatics. One of the revolutionary feature of this era was the ability to get patients test results via computers, the only downsize was that they were only attainable through that computer alone. That type of information had no way of traveling though another computer. By the year 2000, a push to make electronic records began due to the spike of patient death and injuries due to medical errors by healthcare providers.