Should Health Care Professionals Use Ehrs?

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.

The adoption of EHR has been slower than expected (Gans 1323). With numerous systems available, it is particularly difficult for a smaller practice to identify which system best meets its needs. Other notable challenges for some practices include assumption of the capital investment as well as managerial responsibilities associated with the IT infrastructure. A common implementation challenge encountered is the lack of a universal vision and definition of EHR. Since there are multiple interpretations of the definition of EHR and attendant requirements, identifying current and future needs is a complex process for potential users. Short term limited ability systems will eventually become obsolete as there is a move toward more global EHR systems. On June 18,

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.

From many years, Electronic Health Records have been saying to improve the quality of Electronic Health Records and increase it over Canada. Medicare systems in Canada have been unsuccessful to attain and advance health care system for individuals compare to other countries. Many of these missions to make it successful involve numerous stakeholders including the federal government, and other organization that have the insights of operating the procedure of EHRs. Canadian government health care spend billions of dollars in the past decade, and only 30% of care providers are using EHRs Lorenzi, 2009). This is an important factor to our lives though they need increase EHRs system into their work situation and continue it on daily basis.

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,

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

Practices using EHR systems accredited by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and

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

In 2010, Stage 1 was introduced which focused on EHR data and sharing. Healthcare providers were obligated to store health information electronically in a standardize format that allowed authorized providers and patients to easily access the info. Stage 2 began in 2014, this stage broadened the use of EHR software for health information exchange among providers which will feature enhanced integration for e-prescribing and lab results, increased sharing of patient care summaries, and continuing to encourage patients to engage in their care in order to earn the incentives. Stage 3 began in 2016 which was set out to improve outcomes. To improve the outcome of health for patients on a large scale, the quality of health information exchanged needed to be focused on, giving providers efficient and easy access to comprehensive patient data (LeGate, 2013).

A wave of medical errors and patient deaths caused by healthcare providers renewed the search for a viable EHR system in 2000. Electronic health records would allow "providers to make better decisions and provide better

What this equates is that the national government cannot impose any laws that enforce provinces to adopt one national EHR that would allow seamless flow of information. Each province has its own strategic direction and different EHR systems in place that make interoperability difficult and thus information is not readily available across different parts of the country. Furthermore, there are no national standards thus the quality of data greatly varies amongst provinces and increases costs for a national integration/ consolidation of

“An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users.” (healthit.gov) The EHR mandate was created “to share information with other health care providers and organizations – such as laboratories, specialists, medical imaging facilities, pharmacies, emergency facilities, and school and workplace clinics – so they contain information from all clinicians involved in a patient’s care.” ("Providers & Professionals | HealthIT.gov", n.d., p. 1) The process has proved to be quite challenging for providers. As an

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).

When implementing a new EHR, departments need to have a plan in place when the system causes change to the process and design within the organization. Often times, regulations and policies need to be changed to coincide with a new system in place, such as a new EHR program (University of Scranton, 2017). A way to mitigate this situation is to start at the federal level’s regulations and work down the scope from there. This will guarantee that mandatory rules are still being followed and there is successful transition into future policies. Additionally, funding will be crucial to the organization’s ability to have a new EHR system. Each department needs to ensure they are properly tracking funds and that they can afford to upgrade.

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