The Electronic Health Record System

In a healthcare world that operates on stringent budgets and margins, we begin to see the need for a higher capacity healthcare delivery system. This in turn puts pressure on the healthcare organizations to ensure higher standards of patient care, and compliance with the reform provisions. However, these are the harsh realities of today’s healthcare environment, a setting in which value does not always equal quality. The use of technology can help to amend some of this by providing higher capacity care without compromising quality; this can be done with the use of such technology as electronic health records (EHRs). This paper will aim to address how EHRs influence healthcare today by expanding upon topics such as funding sources, reimbursement methods, economic factors, socioeconomic factors, business influences, and cost containment.

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.

Our one hundred bed hospital is in need of updating from paper charting to computerized health records. In doing this, we will meet our goal of compliance with meaningful use legislation. We assembled a team of members to assist with this task and together we have narrowed the search to two health care systems. Those two systems are EPIC and Meditech and we will now discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each, with a final recommendation for our new healthcare system.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 identified three main components of meaningful use: the use of a certified EHR in a meaningful manner, electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of care, and the use of technology to submit clinical outcomes and quality measures (Heath Resources and Service Administration, n.d.). ARRA includes many measures to modernize our nation’s infrastructure, with the “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act” being an example. The HITECH Act is an effort led by Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) in support of electronic health records and meaningful use (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC 2016). According to Galbraith (2013), the HITECH Act aims to promote the use of EHRs by providing over $27 billion in monetary incentives for health care providers that become “meaningful users”. CMS uses these core objectives to determine if a health care provider has satisfied meaningful use and is eligible to receive financial incentives (Galbraith, 2013).

This Stage 1 started from 2011-2012, its objective dealt with data capture and sharing, these sheets are providing these services to assist professionals and hospitals understand the requirements of each objective and demonstrate meaningful use success. This stage also allows qualified providers to receive their payment after fulfilling nine core objectives and one public health objective. The second stage of the Meaningful Use is Stage 2 started in 2014; it dealt with the advanced clinical processes. This Stage introduces new aims and measures, as well as higher entries; it also required health care providers to prolong EHR capabilities to a greater portion of their patient populations. The last stage of the Meaningful Use is Stage 3, this Stage it still in a building phase. Its objective will be focusing on improving quality, safety, efficiency, and leading to improved outcomes. Even though the details of this program have not been finalized, Meaningful Use Stage 3 will work to make the program easier to understand. It will provide the professionals (EPs) and hospitals the ability to exchange and use information between electronic health records, and improve patient outcomes. Based on the current timeline, healthcare providers have the choice to begin Stage 3 Meaningful Use in 2017 but are not permitted to use it until

Meaningful Use engages patients and families in their health care, improve care coordination, improve population and public health and maintain privacy and security ("CMS," 2015, para. 1). Healthcare providers must show CMS that they are using their EHRs in ways that can positively affect the care of their patients. To do this, providers must meet all of the requirements established by CMS for this program and be able to demonstrate Meaningful Use of their EHRs to receive incentive reimbursement. The Meaningful Use program is divided into 3 stages which span 2011 (data capture and sharing), 2013 (advanced clinical processes) and 2015 (improved outcomes).

Meaningful use may have helped the increase in implementation of healthcare information technology by providing overall the best quality and safety we can for the patients. HIT made it easier for doctors and administrators to provide better care for patients. Electronic Health Record (EHR) focused on the patient’s well-being. Also, it has helped make patients and their family engage with each other and feel comfortable with their doctor. With all these benefits we were getting from technology it became easier for society to notice how important we needed healthcare information technology. Being exposed more to it also made it easier for doctors and administrator’s to give the public what they deserve when it came to healthcare. Meaningful use

First, the process of acquiring a new EHR system will start with developing an office strategy based on different needs of our clinic. Some critical questions should be asked such as what would be the main goal to go paperless, what would be some features that my clinicians regard important, would my practitioners need a remote access, or would they be committed in learning and using

But as noted previously, more is needed than standardizing these processes. Health care providers (physicians and hospitals) should embrace electronic health records (EHRs) and should integrate appropriate information from billing systems with clinical information (the recording and analysis of clinical services) from EHRs (Wikler et al., 2012; Cutler et al., 2012). To address concerns that occur due to accessing medical records, the secretary of health and human services could expand criteria under the Health information Technology for Economic and Clinical

It is important to understand that, meaningful use regulation established objectives that healthcare organizations such as hospitals and other healthcare facilities have to meet in order to be qualified for the center for Medicare and Medicaid services. Many healthcare organizations are making progress when it comes to meaningful regulations. There was a recent survey that shows that a lot of healthcare organization began using some type of electronic health record so as to be able to input patients, data, information, allows healthcare providers to establish clinical notes and to be able to write prescription and transfer patients’ information from one provider to another (Lopez, 2014).

In addition to the core elements, providers will have to choose any five of the ten additional tasks to implement in 2011-2012. Some examples of these might be clinical lab results, patient appointment reminders and drug-formulary checks. This gives the providers a chance to choose their own path toward full EHR implementation and meaningful use. Legislation ties payments to the achievement of advances in health care processes and outcomes. The regulations are specific as to when providers will have to use particular functions in order to be considered meaningful users. The meaningful use rule acknowledges the urgency of adopting the electronic health record and recognizes the challenges it will pose on all providers.

The goal in healthcare today is to achieve better patient outcomes. Technology is changing daily that affects how patient care is provided. As the world around us continues to move into a more advanced technology based healthcare system incentives are offered to qualifying healthcare entities, provided they are utilizing approved health information technology (IT) to comply with standards set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (Jones, Rudin, Perry, & Shekelle, 2014). Standards such as meaningful use help ensure with the use of electronic health records (EHR) that patients are receiving quality care (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.). This paper will define and discuss the importance and implications of meaningful use relating to healthcare. Several key points will be discussed including an overview of meaningful use, analysis, further recommendations and a conclusion.

New developments and improvements of technology in healthcare create opportunities for facilities to improve quality, delivery, safety and access to care. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act states that healthcare professionals and facilities that are eligible would qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments. In order to qualify for these incentive payments, they must adopt and implement a certified electronic health record technology and meets specified objectives in a meaningful way. This paper will discuss the history and overview of Meaningful Use (MU), provide an analysis of core criteria and application to nursing, healthcare, and public health, and provide evidence-based recommendations

Focusing on the outcome and not the process of the outcome, a needs assessment is a systematic approach to the electronic record adoption project scenario. The outcome of a needs assessment given scenario is the adoption of an Electronic Health Record system by the health care organization. For the site to adopt and accept implementation of an electronic health record system, benefits have to be clearly outlined and presented to the site staff. The staff must be convinced that the core functions of implementation of an electronic health records system is management of patient health information and data. Transitioning from an analogous patient records too EHR system, patient information and knowledge becomes immediately accessible and navigable by medical personnel. Electronic Health Record system would also provide the staff immediate access to testing result and CPOEs. Electronic health record CPOEs eliminates the self-evident sometimes ineligible physician order. Eliminating the time from when the physician prescribes the order to the time the procedure is performed is a core benefit to electronic health record application. Finally the staff needs to be informed that one of the outcomes of an electronic health record application system is decision support. Prevention, drug prescription, diagnosis, and disease management are functional EHR decision support functionality applications (“Comprehensive Needs Assessment,” ed.gov, 2001).

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).