Pros And Cons Of The EHR System As Community Hospital

In regards to technology and how its influences healthcare today we see the use of EHRs, which allows for a high capacity healthcare environment by condensing patient information into an easily accessible form for all healthcare professionals. “EHRs allow us to collect meaningful data to determine the efficacy in which our units are functioning” (Biddle & Milstead 2016, p.12). This technology can help manage the high capacity hospital environment while not compromising quality. This

Today’s world in Health care Electronic health records are being utilized in every office. With that utilization of the electronic health records from your staff and physicians and patients, the reduction in mis-diagnoses is continuing to decrease as the years pass. Some would say that EHR is a continual migration path sometimes dictated by internal organizational issues. (Latour, 2009) A CIO would need to research and evaluate every option for her hospital staff. The hospital would do great to join the newly HIR organization to extend its ability to care for patients across the continuum of care (Latour, 2005) The whole purpose of the EHR system is to provide quality care by providing care to patients ensuring accuracy, comprehensiveness, data integrity, data security, and decreased medical errors within the patients chart and clinical side.

But with the benefits there are also the risk factors. Some disadvantages of the EHR system would include; initial cost of planning and implementing an EHR system, lack of standardization across the healthcare setting, unauthorized access to patient information (security and privacy), inaccurate patient information if not updated properly, technical downtimes, potential negligence for data loss and possible patient access to conditions that they don’t comprehend which may panic them.

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.

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,

EHRs can positively influence workplace efficiency and communication and improve productivity with better access to and organization of patient data (McGinn, et al., 2011). EHRs can improve operational efficiency by providing the capability of sharing of information within the practice. Additionally, health information can be shared with external health care organizations provided the proper interoperability infrastructure is in place. Physicians can access patient information anytime and anywhere the system is enabled, enhancing patient safety as well as quality and continuity of care, particularly for physicians on call or working at multiple sites. They also can have access to drug recalls or other alerts provided through the EHR.

Adoption of EHR can derive a great amount of benefits in clinical outcomes such as patient safety and quality of care. Qualtiy of care can be measured with different dimensions such as patient safety, effectiveness, and efficiency. Patient safety is defined as ‘avoiding injuries to patients from the care that is intended to help them’(Menachemi and Collum, 2011, p. 49). Often times, lack of time can contribute to omission of asking patients important questions such as drug allergy information and confirming important patient identifiers such as addresses/phone numbers. Improvement of medication error is a well-noted benefit of EHR as seen in numerous researches. According to a study, researchers found that a CPOE system was contributory in reducing serious medication errors by 55% in the hospital setting (Bates, 1998). Many other studies have reported similar findings in patient safety improvement. When e-prescribing is used, prescriptions can be checked for any drug interactions with

Muhammed H. (2015) conducted a study to determine the relationship between EHRs and patient safety. According to the researcher, EHRs are healthcare applications that digitize patient information and clinical workflows. It may be considered as a data repository that stores patient data, and assists providers by providing reference information and recommendations for care. Furthermore it enables providers to electronically place orders and consolidate clinical notes across hospital departments. The results showed that about 70% of hospitals in PA adopted advanced EHRs since 2012 and there has been a 27% decline in patient safety events

A lengthy list of EHR benefits supports the evolution from paper to electronic medical record keeping. One such benefit, the significant reduction of needed storage space. Bulky paper charts require a lot of space and misplaced charts waste time and effort to locate. Since EHR data remains on the computer, medical practices no longer require secure on-site storage, and electronic files eliminate misplacing files. Another benefit to data remaining on the computer rather than a medical chart, electronic records allow immediate access from several locations. EHRs provide emergency room personnel access to allergies and other pertinent information of unconscious patients. The on-call physician accesses patient information from their home computer, rather than driving to the medical

These rewards serve as gratification and the offered initiatives contribute to the prevailing positive attitudes from the physicians toward EHRs. These benefits include improved patient safety and quality of care, the ability to reduce healthcare cost, and ultimately better patient health outcomes and satisfaction. According to Jamoom et al. (2013), having the ability to access the patient’s charts remotely, being warned to critical lab values and potential medication errors, and the systems’ ability to identify needed lab tests are all reported benefits of the EHR. Improved overall patient care, the ordering of less medical test due to the availability of lab results, and the ordering of more on-formulary medications are all advantages that physicians reported occurring due to the adoption of the EHRs. The adoption and implementation of the EHR has presented challenges for information technology. These benefits of the EHR outweigh the initial dissatisfaction of the physicians. For the adoption of EHR to be successful in the healthcare industry it is important that the physician’s outlook remain

The rapid development of technology is directly impacting the design and direction of the EHR. As medical devices are smaller and more user friendly, patients are being involved in reporting and this will be incorporated into the EHR. In addition to technological changes, EHRs have evolved in relation to consumer needs. Originally the EHRs were focused

In 2009 the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which led to the significant investment of $30 billion in health information technology. The RRA provided financial incentives for hospitals, and physicians to use EHR systems in 2014, 83% of physicians use some form of EHRs, and 76% of hospitals have an EHR setup. Even with a basic EHR system a hospital or physician can create an autonomy of service that the patient can take comfort in that they are receiving the highest quality and tailor made health care experience. Noting the physicians and hospitals with EHR Patients feel as though they play an even larger role in determining their need for care but the outcome of the care they receive. If care is given to a patient at a specialized care facility and can, travel to a hospital for a separate issue communication should be seen by both facilities ensuring the patient is not receiving duplicate treatment. Patients who have EHR interface have a more satisfying experience at about 82% (source, 2016). With the open lines of communication, a real collaborative relationship can develop

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) had developed the “Use of Dense Display of Data and Information Design Principles in Primary Care Health Care Information Technology Systems (Virginia)” project, which identified the electronic health records utilization. Key recommendations is to improve the lack of standardized practices, development of process, and share information freely. These reports include core establishments in the EHR aspect in a hospital environment. The development of criteria through these practices, explore the operation of EHRs are crucial. Plus, some basic steps in utilizing IT systems would be to deliver safe, effective, and efficient care.

Electronic health records (EHR’s) have many advantages, but there are plenty of disadvantages. EHR’s were created to manage the many aspects of healthcare information. Medical professionals use them daily and most would feel lost without it. Healthcare organizations were encouraged to adopt EHR’s in 2009 due to the fact that a bill passed known as The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act). “The HITECH Act outlines criteria to achieve “meaningful use” of certified electronic records. These criteria must be met in order for providers to receive financial incentives to promote adoption of EHRs as an integral part of their daily practice”, (Conrad, Hanson, Hasenau & Stocker-Schneider, 2012).

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