The Electronic Health Record

Health providers across America are using Electronic Health Records systems to keep up with patient’s health information. Long hours of filing and writing patients health information manually has become a thing of the past. The Electronic Health Record system, known as EHRs, has changed how patients and health providers communicate as a whole. It has taken information technology to a different spectrum, and has helped patients become more aware of their health history and health conditions. Throughout the years, EHRs systems have been crucially ridicule in the medical world, due to lack of knowledge, high expenses, and apprehension among health providers. Because there will always be challenges when new technology starts to expand in any type of establishment. I believe that EHRs serves a great purpose in health care despite its delays.

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)

With the increasing advances with technology in this day in age, there is no surprise that electronic health records will soon be a major component in all hospitals of the Canadian health care system. Assessment of Electronic Health Record Usability with Undergraduate Nursing Students is an informative article, written by Jones & Donelle, about the increased use of electronic health records within our system and discusses its benefits, as well as difficulties nursing students experience with this new type of technology. It is a new method of technology that will soon replace paper charting and will allow access to patients to communicate with their health care providers, manage their health information, schedule appointments, and have access

The National Alliance for Health Information Technology, 2008, defines electronic health records (EHR) as an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability stands and that can be created, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and stand across more than one health care organization (Wager, Lee, & Glaser, 2013, p. 136). In other words, EHR are patient’s medical history electronically which can include their past health, social health, demographics, medications, diagnosis, progress notes etc. EHR’s were developed to improve patient care .

As an Electronic Health Record worker it can be difficult with patients medical history, diagnoses, medication, treatment plans, immunization records, and radiology; a lot of this can be overwhelming because you have to make sure when your doing these things it takes times rushing into it may cause errors and huge mistakes when dealing with a patients health and there life itself. Things that you do can reflect on improving their quality of a patients care. For one not having enough training can be an issue maybe to much information to capture at one time.Lack of interoperability between information technologies, cost of set-up and maintenance, HIPAA violations, empty data fields, coping and pasting and end closing. It would definitely be best

An electronic health records (EHRs) has the simplest, digital (computerized) versions of patient 's paper charts. But, (EHRs) when fully up and running are so much more than that. EHRs are real-time patient-centered records. They make information available instantly "whenever and wherever it is needed." And they bring together in one place everything about a patient 's health. EHRs can: contain information about a patient 's medical history, diagnoses, medications, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, lab and test results; offer access to evidence-based tools that providers can use in making decisions about a patient 's care, automate and streamline provider’s workflow, increase organization and accuracy of patient information, support key market changes in payer requirements and consumer expectations. One of the key features of an EHR is that it can

Nursing information systems (NIS) are “computer systems that manage clinical data from a variety of healthcare environments and are readily accessible to improve patient care (Biohealthmatics.com, 2006). The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an electronic version of a patient’s medical history. This record is kept current by the provider and includes administrative information, clinical data, demographic info, progress notes, medications, vitals, past medical history, immunizations, lab data and laboratory reports (CMS.gov, 2012).

As the healthcare landscape continues to shift and evolve, public health departments find themselves facing numerous complex challenges. This makes it imperative that local health departments and individual providers work together to improve the health of their communities.

A digital form and version of what has long been the patient’s paper chart is known as an Electronic Health Record (EHR). The EHR also includes treatment, physical examination, and investigations. It is sustained and maintained over time by the medical provider and often includes all the key administrative information.

An electronic health record allows providers to access health records more readily and to optimize the health outcomes of their patients. Missouri implemented a program with the goal to help Primary care providers to achieve meaningful use of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) by March of 2012 (Missouri Health Information Technology Assistance Center). Meaningful use focuses on things such as asthma, diabetes, and hypertension since they have the most impact and quality and cost in healthcare. Healthcare information should be accessible nationally. Many other industries have utilized technological advances to their benefit, but health care has not on the national level as of yet

The implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) will be beneficial to the advanced practice nurse (APN). EMRs are readily available, portable, helpful in improving the safety and quality of patient care, and allow more time for interaction with the patient (Denisco & Barker, 2016). As APNs, EMR will help streamline access to pertinent data needed to make clinical decisions, alerts when an error is about to be made, triggers any allergies, assist in determining a diagnosis and in entering appropriate orders, and prompts APNs when new patterns in patient data are acknowledged (Denisco & Barker, 2016). The use of EMR is a great way to search patient’s information in an organized manner like their history, assessments, lab results, medications, plan of care, procedures, and referrals. By having this relevant information in one place, the APNs can decrease time looking up information and focus their attention on the patient.

The Henry Ford Health System has currently acquired another hospital system from the Jackson area, thus creating a six-hospital affiliate system ("Henry Ford Health," 2016). Upon further review of the electronic health record programs, the board of directors have come to the conclusion that there must be a new electronic health record system developed that will link the medical records amongst all of the various hospitals. Quality of care is what the Henry Ford Health system strives for, thus, there must be interoperability amongst our hospitals. The new electronic health record system will have the following data systems: management information systems, decision support systems, executive information systems, expert system, and knowledge management system to ensure patient quality care and interoperability amongst all the hospitals. The implementation for the new electronic record system is expected to take approximately three years, so that information systems office can handle the testing stages of the new system. The Henry Ford Health system has had much success with our new billing program that links all the patient accounts within our hospital system. Subsequently, the board of directors believes that the implementation of our new electronic health record will be a smashing success, which will lower the chance of a patient having to repeat the same medical testing.

Proficiency of nursing informatics are vital to safe, useful, and quality practice, and can result in improved patient care outcomes. Nurses who have personal experiences with electronic health records (EHRs) were incorporated in the article for their individual responses. A limitation of the article identified includes the exclusion of evidence-based data but instead personal experiences of nurses. Despite the limitation, this article provides a solid foundation for nurses because nursing technology competency and proficiency is important to thoroughly enhance patient

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a system that collects and tracks health related information of an individual and populations in a digital format (1). It provides key clinical data associated with the individual including: demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data, and radiology reports (2). The purpose of the EHR is to allow health care providers real time access to a patient’s records to provide the patient with the best care possible.

In today’s medical field technology plays a big role when it comes to patient care. Technology is huge when it comes to giving the patient the best type of quality care when they are in the hospital. In the old days people would just write it down on a sheet of paper and record it by hand, which caused mistakes. Now with the Electronic Health Record those mistakes are drastically declining. Statistics have shown that using the Electronic Health Record has lowered Nursing mistakes as well as improved patient care. Our society has progressed through the years and has been introduced with the Electronic Health Record which has drastically improved our health care system. The Electronic Health Record provides great communication between