The Health And Health Care

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.

Over the past few decades, many drastic changes occurred in U.S health care delivery.   Our current healthcare trends demand nurses to take more active role in the health care decisions in hospital setting, long term care setting and in community healthcare setting. Since “nursing is based upon a body of knowledge that is always changing with new discoveries and innovation” Potter and Perry (2005), nursing profession is compelled to grow from being just a traditional bedside nurse. IOM’s future of nursing report which is released in 2010 calls nurses to be “more highly educated, diverse nursing workforce”.

Therefore, several authors share some of the same ideas as to what some of the barriers faced during the transition to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and if these barriers still exist once the transition to a full EHR system is complete. Herrick, et al., 2010, states that currently, there is no hard-core evidence to support the argument that Electronic Health Record (EHRs) and Health Information Technology is the best route for health organizations to prevent errors. In fact, the use of such technology could potentially lead to errors if information incorrectly entered in the system and Haupt, 2011, statement that smart software could help to prevent life-threatening errors better when administering medicines. Whereas, Boonstra & Broekhuis, 2010, states from a physician point a view need the understanding of the possible barriers that faced during implementation of EHRs because there a tremendous amount of literature on the obstacles but no suggestion on how to resolve these barriers have not been viewed. Barriers such as, financial on great startup and ongoing cost, technical and time to train staff and how much knowledge do they have with computer skills and psychological when support needed from vendors, etc. It suggests that once those barriers have been ironed out and a plan has set in place, then the transition from paper documentation to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) may go a lot easier for the healthcare arena physician, nurses and administrative

In the modern world technology is everywhere and it affects everyone’s daily life. People are constantly attached to cell phones, laptops, and other electronics, which all have affected how people live their lives. Technology is also a large part of the healthcare system today. There are many electronics and technologies that are used in health care, such as electronic health record, medication bar code scanning, electronic documentation, telenursing, and there are many more forms of technology that impact nursing. One technology that stands out is the electronic health record. The electronic health record, also referred to as EHR, is an electronic version of a patient’s chart, and it contains is a list of the patient’s current medications, allergies, laboratory results, diagnoses, immunization dates, images, treatments, and medical history (“Learn EHR Basics,” 2014). The purpose of the electronic health record is to have a patient’s health care record available to health care providers nationwide, but the patient can decide who has access to their record (Edwards, Chiweda, Oyinka, McKay, & Wiles, 2011). The electronic health record is a very important technology in health care and it impacts nurses, nursing care, and has a significant impact on patient outcomes.

Quality, safety, and efficiency are essential attributes that healthcare workers must be able to perform to ensure their patient receives necessary care and treatment. “Implementations of potentially transformative eHealth technologies are currently underway internationally, often with significant impact on national expenditure. England has, for example, invested at least £12.8 billion in a National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) for the National Health Service, and the Obama administration in the United States (US) has similarly committed to a US $38 billion eHealth investment in health care. Such large-scale expenditure has been justified on the grounds that electronic health records (EHRs), picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), electronic pre-scribing (ePrescribing) and associated computerised provider (or physician) order entry systems (CPOE), and

The importance of the nurse to be able to provide patient care that reflects the evidence based practice model is significant. The nurse’s clinical decisions, central to their nursing practice, reveal their knowledge in regards to current best practice policies and guidelines (Thorsteinsson & Sveinsdóttir, 2014). Safe and effective patient care depends upon the nurse’s ability to perform in a manner that coincides with these current best practice standards

This shift in the setting for health care is moving health care back into the patient’s environment and also requiring people to take a greater role in their individual health management. Nurses can offer professional guidance in this trend as well. Proper diagnosis and treatment will be of paramount importance in the future so that health care funds can be better applied and the nursing experience and knowledge gleaned can be more widely disseminated in the field. (Saver, 2006)

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Affordable Care Act challenged the nursing profession to grow and change the way they practice their profession. The IOM recommendations asked nurses to “envision a future system that makes quality care accessible to the diverse populations of the United States, intentionally promotes wellness and disease prevention, [and] reliably improves health outcomes”(Buxton & Scott, 2012 p.15) The goals it has set are nurses should practice to their full extent of practice, we are to achieve higher levels of education, nurses should partner with healthcare members to redesign healthcare, and more effective planning and policy making require better data collection.

Nurses role began to expand more and more in the 21st century. Nurses are expected to play an important role in the continuum of care coordination. Registered Nurses serve as an intermediary between other professionals for effective and improved health care delivery system centered on good quality patient care. To better achieve this, nurses are expected to educate themselves professionally in order to be able to manage the evolving changes in health care system with evidence-based practices using their critical thinking and decision making skills.

As nurses, we treat a diverse population, each patient having different needs and requiring different care. On any given day we rarely treat two patients in the same way, this requires us to think critically and work within the full scope of our education and knowledge. By doing this we

As health care systems worldwide move toward instituting evidence based practice, its implementation can be challenging (TIGER Initiative, 2007). The amount and difficulty of information nurses are likely to accomplish continues to rise exponentially (Bernard, Nash and O’Brien, 2005). Providing consistent, effective, customised care requires a degree of mastery of data and management that will be attainable only with the improved use of information technology (Bates and Gawande, 2003).

As professionals we must remember that we cannot continue to practice based on attitudes such as “we have always done it this way”, or “if is it not broken we do not need to fix it.” We must allow ourselves to grow in our profession and in healthcare. Nurses must be self-motivated to learn and to follow the recommendations from the IOM (2010) by pursuing additional certifications and constantly being students of their craft. In essence, the IOM report advocates improving ourselves in order to help our patients. In the coming years, with the increased number of nurses trained to higher levels, we will see a trend towards an expanded scope of practice, greater autonomy, and uniform practice. This evolution, not only advocated by the IOM but necessitated by the changing healthcare environment, will allow nursing as a profession to take on a greater role not only in the delivery of care

The IOM (Institute of Medicine) report discloses the fundamental reasons as to why nurses’ responsibilities, education, and roles should change to respond effectively to the health needs presented by aging populations. It draws attention as well as responding to the evolving complex health care system (Nickitas et al., 2010). The IOM report urges nurses to take a higher leadership role within the nursing practice to prompt important changes in the health care system so that they may be in a position to attend to the dynamic health care system. Relating the IOM structure and guidelines to the topic at hand, there is a need to motivate change within the nursing practice to advance to greater heights of the health care delivery system. Based on the current practice, clinical documentation nurse, their primary duties are analyzing medical records for accuracy along with quality to maintain charts, medical records, plus reports and solve issues involving the documentation. They also manage clinical trial in addition to service documents. The change required in this particular practice is digitizing of the documentation processes so that the whole process may gain speed, minimize records misrepresentation as well as deletions. For that reason, there is an urgent need for this digital transition, change in the documentation role so that patients’ medical records might be

IOM recommendation 7, Prepare nurses to lead change to advance health, empowers nurses to apply practical experience and knowledge gained through patient experience directly to the health care system. Nurses understand the demands of everyday people. They know how people relate to health care appointments and instructions. They see the impact excessive time requirements and excessive cost have on everyday people. This unique balance is best illustrated in this quote. “Nurses have the unique responsibility of bringing the business of caring to board agendas and bringing “the bedside to the boardroom” (Walton, Lake, Mullinix, Allen, & Mooney, 2015). The understanding how to manage the work loads of Facility care to Community Nursing can be applied

Through my career as a nurse, I have seen the usage of three different electronic health records (EHR). In seeing what worked and what did not work. Has given me insight as to how useful an EHR can be in the care of patients. The more secure the nurse is with and EHR the better the outcomes for the patients health. This exhibited to me the need to have an EHR that enables the whole healthcare system to bring all of its expertise and knowledge to help increase responsiveness, efficacy, security, privacy, accuracy, and access to care of the individual patient (Sensmeier, 2014, p. 16).