Personal Narrative: My Experience With EHR

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states that in order to realize meaningful use of the EHR technology, healthcare providers are obliged to apply the technology in a approach that enriches quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare delivery; ebbs healthcare inconsistencies; involves patients and families; enriches care coordination; expands population and public health; and guarantees sufficient privacy and security guards for personal health information. (U.S Department of Health and

The electronic health record (EHR) is a digital record of a patient’s health history that may be made up of records from many locations and/or sources, such as hospitals, providers, clinics, and public health agencies. The EHR is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has built-in safeguards to assure patient health information confidentiality and security. (Huston, 2013)

Reducing the incidence of medical error by improving the accuracy and clarity of medical records.

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

After decades of paper based medical records, a new type of record keeping has surfaced - the Electronic Health Record (EHR). EHR is an electronic or digital format concept of an individual’s past and present medical history. It is the principle storage place for data and information about the health care services provided to an individual patient. It is maintained by a provider over time and capable of being shared across different healthcare settings by network-connected information systems. Such records may include key administrative and clinical data relevant to that persons care under a particular provider. Examples of such records may include: demographics, physician notes, problems or injuries, medications and allergies, vital

EHRs give you direct access to your health records – This is my favorite option of the EHR. When I have gone into the doctors office and either lost my paperwork, had test run, schedule an appointment or have a slew of other questions, I can go online and find the answers. I have use the online app for my HMO for checking my test results, researching a particular symptom, scheduling an appointment, reordering a prescription, emailing my physician and many, many other thing and all from the comfort of my

However, they give healthcare professionals a better way to access information (John, 2015, p. 30).

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.

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.

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,

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

Electronic health records (EHRs): Medical records are now kept in an electronic versus a paper chart. All health information regarding past and current medical history, treatment plans, and medications are kept in the EHR. The system also allows sharing of medical information from provider to provider as needed. Many HER systems have a feature to allow patients to log into a patient portal to review lab results, diagnostic tests, plans of care, and email access to the provider

I had a chance to talk with Dr. Benjamin Maughan who is a clinical fellow at Johns Hopkins medical institution. Dr. Maughan was fully aware that hospital is currently using Epic as an EHR system. In his opinion, EHR improves the quality and safety of patient care by having any patient information available to healthcare providers. He had to emphasize a downtime scenario where he had to use paper charts that vastly affected the quality of patient care.

The definition of the EHR is a place in which patient records are created, stored and retrieved. Most professionals have incorporated them into their practice. EHR’s are known to have allowed the sharing of information between a patients’ caregivers in an increased amount of time. They increase safety and efficiency in the clinical setting by delivering legible information.

Another big plus of the EHRs is that studies have shown that it has helped providers improve accuracy of diagnoses and health outcomes (Couch, 2008). For example, nurses could have reliable access to patients complete health information and have pictures which would help with whatever problem they might encounter. EHR doesn’t just keep patients medications and allergies, it also check for problems whenever a new medication is prescribed and it also alerts the nurse of potential problems (Couch, 2008). EHRs can also tell the nurse if potential safety problems occur, which helps them avoid more serious consequences for patients, which can lead to better outcomes. The EHRs can also help nurses quickly identify and correct operational problems, which compared to the paper-based setting, those kinds of problems would be more difficult to correct. It can also help