Security Issues of the Electronic Ehr and Issues with Converting to an Ehr

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)

Once a medical record has been transferred into an EMR it can be shredded. Some medical offices chose to keep the records in a secured location. I suppose when it's kept secured it's a back up. But would it really be effective if they didn't change details in it every time a patient visits? some people I suppose shred it because they've used scanners to get all the information from paper to computer.

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.

Along with the new technologies applying in healthcare, the documentation processes and storages also change from paper charts to computer-based electronic health records (EHR). Many healthcare organizations currently maintain patients’ health records in both formats of paper and electronic. The combination is known as hybrid health record system, which is used to assist in different methods that patients’ information is collected. Hybrid health records (HHR) contain specific patients’ health information. HHRs are stored manually and electronically in multiple places. Current patients’ health records usually contain both digital documents and handwritten notes. Patients’ data are electronically stored, such as laboratory, radiology tests,

Electronic health records were a technological advancement in the healthcare industry in which paper patient record’s became digital. The transition from paper to digital charting allowed easier, quicker access to patient information for those who were authorized to do so. EHRs are secure and protected with username and password access only. It contains information such as patient medical history, procedures, diagnoses, medications, labs, tests, and treatments. Healthcare professionals and organizations who are authorized to access a patient’s electronic health record can do so at ease via a secure network or online database (HealthIT, 2013).

With EHR, there’s are bigger risk for security breaches and information exposure when using computer systems that require the internet to access patients’ medical records. HITECH and HIPAA, were created to control the number of computer threats. EHR, is a secure software, that healthcare personnel use to document patients’ medical and personal information in. This system contains piece of personal information from a patient’s name to each surgery this person has had in their life time.

Quality is something that many medical care institutions have advocated for. With the innovation of Electronic Health Records, healthcare facilities as well as institutions were consumed with the concerns of how medical records were being handled. Currently there are many national organizations as well as some of the government agencies who are trying to pursue the cause of quality and patient safety (GAO, 2010). Although, Electronic Health Records are presumed to bring quality to the way healthcare data is being handled,

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

Use of EHR (electronic health records) in United States has increased in past years and have gained widespread use in the country. The use of EHR-Electronic Health Records or EMR-Electronic Medical Records and the systems that support them have gained standardized collection of health information and data for patient and healthcare providers. Because of these technologies, healthcare providers now have information about their patients at their fingertips, which has led to better and more accurate care. There are debates on using EHR. According to Mushtaq (2015), one of the most common debate is the use of EHR compliance and the value of these technologies that surround them (Mushtaq, 2015). Providers wonder if EHR use is useful and what is to be gained for the HCP-Healthcare provider. In regards to such debates and ongoing conversations, it is important to understand the definition of meaningful use and whether these technologies have resulted in meaningful use. According to Burchell (2016), The government developed the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act of 2009, which incorporates the meaningful use program (Burchell, 2016). The program has goals that tell us how to use the meaningful use with EMR or EHR. It helps HCP and organizations alike attain, use and keep goals like patient and clinical outcomes, individual patient autonomy, and increased transparency for providers. When these goals are attained and kept it will greatly

Today, the patient will visit the same doctor and the doctor will enter the data into a tablet or pc. The EHR is a designed very similar to the paper chart, but is programmed to collect and segregate the information in different formats to transmit securely to the necessary partners. Those partners include insurance carriers, public health entities, clearinghouses, laboratories, and pharmacist. This data is collected and stored on secure servers. In most EHR’s today, a doctor who has a private practice, and maybe affiliated with a hospital has the ability to allow the hospital to access a patient’s record, if that patient has agreed to release their information to the hospitals. So if the patient is taken to the local hospital, the hospital can have access to the patient’s records if an authorization is in place. The EHR will not only collect the patient medical information, it will track the medical information. Providers are required to secure the information and track the medical records activity via a built-in audit system that will show the medical records history and the name of all parties that access the patient’s records. Poor EHR system design and improper use can cause EHR-related errors that jeopardize the integrity of the information in the EHR, leading to errors that endanger patient safety or decrease the quality of care. These unintended consequences also may increase fraud and abuse and can have

Furthermore, during a medical emergency, physicians, or nurses who do not have time to access a computer for terminal cases can just simply grab patient’s chart (Tsai, Jack.2008). It’s like when a time is of the essence, paper records can make a difference. In addition, with paper health record it is stored in either a big warehouse or lock cabinet and only authorized personnel can obtain the medical records.

As stated in the reading on page 15, the use of EHRs for research would allow for measuring the health of certain patient populations and even provide evidence for improving efficiency and effectiveness for healthcare processes and outcomes. Data from EHRs could be collected to improve quality of care to patients by checking for accuracy in the records and also looking through medication and allergy logs to assure that all correct medication was given. EHRs could also be collected to review patient’s demographic information if physicians were noticing a familiarity in the patient’s symptoms, which could allow for quicker control of an outbreak or a contagious

The use of EHRs in the healthcare system will provide the users with correct and complete information about patient's health and allow the provider to give best care possible. It will also allow the patient to receive the best care in an emergency situation, allowing the providers to access patient information instantly to make possible the immediate treatment. Another benefits that patients and health care provider will have using EHRs will be the ability to coordinate care for a patient who have a specific disease that require close monitoring, and will enhance the knowledge of patient and families in how to care for the patient's health. (HealthIT, 2014). Thinking a little further, it can enhance the quality of care that a patient receive, making the provider accountable for caring for the patient and analyzing the necessary data to create better outcomes. It will also help to analyze drug interactions between providers orders and reduce the duplication of orders and

In the traditional paper-based system, a patient’s paper chart may become unavailable or inaccessible when the health care professional needs it. For instance, another individual might be using the paper chart within the building, or it may be lost or misplaced regardless of its tracking system, or an individual inadvertently picked it up and now it is hidden under a stack of files on someone’s desk. However, although the paper chart is unavailable, the clinician must still provide

Covey (1992) says “to succeed at breaking old habits and making new ones, learn how to handle the restraining forces and harness the driving forces to achieve the daily private victory”(p.72). There are a number of barriers and limitations that providers are concerned with in the adoption of the EHR, obviously. One of the top barriers to implementing the EHR system is adding older files and records to the system. Organization sometimes fail to include older records when choosing a start date. This can be done simply by scanning in the documents to store them as images and/or pdf files. If they are hard to read, medical professionals may not be pleased with that.