The Health Care System Has Come A Long Way From Pen And Paper

Electronic health records can lessen the disintegration of care by refining care coordination. The use of electronic health records will deliver providers with accurate information. This is especially important for those that see multiple specialists, and enable a smooth transition between care settings and receive treatment in emergency

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)

Electronic health records (EHR) are health records that are generated by health care professionals when a patient is seen at a medical facility such as a hospital, mental health clinic, or pharmacy. The EHR contains the same information as paper based medical records like demographics, medical complaints and prescriptions. There are so many more benefits to the EHR than paper based medical records. Accuracy of diagnosis, quality and convenience of patient care, and patient participation are a few examples of the

After decades of paper based medical records, a new type of record keeping has surfaced - the Electronic Health Record (EHR). EHR is an electronic or digital format concept of an individual’s past and present medical history. It is the principle storage place for data and information about the health care services provided to an individual patient. It is maintained by a provider over time and capable of being shared across different healthcare settings by network-connected information systems. Such records may include key administrative and clinical data relevant to that persons care under a particular provider. Examples of such records may include: demographics, physician notes, problems or injuries, medications and allergies, vital

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.

Electronic health records is a major component in the United States health care system. It has been proven to improve health care quality by saving time and reducing

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

An Electronic Health Record is a computerized form of a patient’s medical chart. These records allow information to be readily available to authorized providers during a patient’s encounter with the healthcare system. These systems do not only contain medical histories, current medications and insurance information, they also track patients’ diagnoses, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images and lab tests/results (source). The fundamental aspect of EHRs is that they are able to share a patient’s information quickly across service lines and even between different healthcare organizations. Information is at the fingertips of lab techs, primary care physicians, pharmacies, clinics, etc. The

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.

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) and associated technologies have had a dramatic impact on the UC Davis Health System (UCDHS). UCDHS has realized significant returns on the clinical technology investment in the form of enhanced revenues and reduced costs. The new perspective and approaches enabled by UCDHS‟ EHR are driving improvements in clinical quality and cost reduction. There is no question that these new tools will enable dramatic improvements in care delivery and care quality that were simply not possible in the legacy fragmented paper-based care processes. UCDHS had a clear goal to deploy the EHR across all venues of care (inpatient, emergency department, ambulatory clinics, home health, and Telehealth encounters). Other key goals included secondary use of clinical content, leveraging EHR data to support transitions of care, and to provide better access to clinical data for

Electronic health records (EHRs): Medical records are now kept in an electronic versus a paper chart. All health information regarding past and current medical history, treatment plans, and medications are kept in the EHR. The system also allows sharing of medical information from provider to provider as needed. Many HER systems have a feature to allow patients to log into a patient portal to review lab results, diagnostic tests, plans of care, and email access to the provider

According Health IT Gov (2013), “An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users.” The EHR system that is currently used in my organization contains the medical and treatment histories of the patients. Depending on the individuals role make a difference in what all he or she will have access to on the system. This is a user friendly system that was built to go far beyond the standard clinical data that is typically kept in the patients paper chart. A purpose of the system is to

A hospital in Orlando, FL has decided to switch from a paper-based system to an electronic health record system. An electronic health record is a computerized, accessible record that contains multimedia data (scanned images, digital, video, voice, and so on) about the patient; it is basically the patient’s paper chart. EHR’s are real-time records which allow instant availability to those who have authorized access to the EHR (Bowie, 2011). There are many reasons for a hospital to want to change from paper records to an EHR; the usual primary reason is to improve medical documentation. First and foremost it is important to establish what the hospital’s primary reason is to establish an EHR. Knowing this will make the transition smoother and faster because of comprehensive EHR software and hardware installation that is comprised of a number of different components (Medflow).

Aside from it’s value in logistics, electronic health records (EHRs) can supplement other auxiliary roles and serve useful applications in clinical and other health fields. Although EHRs prove to assist in their functionality, there are complications that impact reliability and further implementation, most notably; inconsistency between systems, holistic data collection, and proper knowledge and use of EHRs. To address these drawbacks efforts should be placed towards unification of EHRs, establishing guidelines for data sharing, and EHRs training. Healthcare evolves current and upcoming physician must be prepared to utilize growing elements in their practice.

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).