Health care has an obligation to protect patient information and make sure that their information is only accessed by those involved in the patient’s care or by those whose job requires them to access that information. The purpose of this paper is to review the intent of the electronic heath record (EHR) along with the mandates related to them and review the steps on how to implement EHR. I will relate meaningful use, which is one of the steps of implementing an electronic health record, and how my own facility is attaining it. I will also discuss HIPAA laws and how patient confidentiality could be threatened by improperly using EHR.
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)
Use of an EHR presents major opportunities for the compromise of patient’s personal health information (PHI). The facility must ensure proper safe guards are implemented and functioning properly at all times. Employees need to be educated on the safety measures to prevent breach of patient confidential health records. Privacy breaches can result from misuse or improper storage of PHI by the healthcare professional, by third party payers, or by lack of proper encryption in the EHR system itself (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2014). The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a law that holds healthcare facilities and professionals accountable for keeping PHI confidential, patients to control
Although the EHR is still in a transitional state, this major shift that electronic medical records are taking is bringing many concerns to the table. Two concerns at the top of the list are privacy and standardization issues. In 1996, U.S. Congress enacted a non-for-profit organization called Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This law establishes national standards for privacy and security of health information. HIPAA deals with information standards, data integrity, confidentiality, accessing and handling your medical information. They also were designed to guarantee transferred information be protected from one facility to the next (Meridan, 2007). But even with the HIPAA privacy rules, they too have their shortcomings. HIPAA can’t fully safeguard the limitations of who’s accessible to your information. A short stay at your local
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the electronic health record mandate. Who started it and when? I will discuss the goals of the mandate. I will discussion will how the Affordable Care Act ties into the mandate of Electronic Health Record. It will describe my own facility’s EHR and what steps are been taken to implement it. I will describe the term “meaningful use,” and it will discuss possible threats to patient confidentiality and the what’s being done by my facility to prevent Health Information and Portability Accountability Act or HIPAA violations.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed by congress in 1996, and helps to ensure the privacy and security of Electronic Health Records (EHR's). By following the rules and regulations set forth under HIPAA, we can ensure the safety of patients' EHR's. We are responsible for protecting patients' records, and there are many measures we can take in order do this. Firstly, we must always keep patients' health information private. This means no discussing the records with people that are not authorized to know, and even then, we should only disclose the minimum necessary amount of information possible. For covered entities, we must designate a privacy and security officer to ensure the privacy
Several years ago, a mandate was ordered requiring all healthcare facilities to progress from paper charting and record keeping to electronic health record (EHR). This transition to electronic formatting has pros and cons associated with it. I will be describing the EHR mandate, including who initiated it, when it was initiated, the goals of the EHR, and how the Affordable Care Act and the Obama administration are tied into it. Then I will show evidence of research and discuss the six steps of this process as well as my facilities progress with EHR. Then I will describe meaningful use and how my facility attained it. Finally, I will define HIPAA law, the possible threats to patient confidentiality relating to EHR, and how what my facility
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ehr mandate and how it relates to affordable care act. The six steps in implementation of an electronic health record and how I would use them in the nursing home. The definition of what meaningful use is and what is HIPAA and what could happen if those laws were violated
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
An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital form of a patient’s paper diagram. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered archives that make data accessible promptly and securely to official operators (healthit.gov). The makers of Practice Fusion have accumulated a free web based EHR. A summary of my EHR experience will be defined along with the structures that were found to be supportive and the features that overwhelmed me. Business values were applied to permit unified handover of information, safely and securely. EHR values that apply in a critical or ambulatory situation will also be protected. Finally, EHR also comes with encounters that ascend when convincing healthcare workers to exploit it. Those worries will be addressed herein. After producing a log in on Practice Fusion’s website, I was associated to my training EHR. My Practice Fusion desktop was furnished with tabs categorized Home, Dashboard, Schedule, Charts, e RX, Messages, Labs/Imaging, Documents, and Reports. Under the charts tab there are test EHRs i.e. Maria Test Adult. I could access the charts and discover the fillings of the electronic archives. Under Maria Test Adult I could view undeveloped
“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
The aim is to have patient data accessible to anyone who needs it, once they necessity it and wherever they want it. Without an EHR, lab outcomes can be re-claimed much more promptly, therefore saving time and currency. The situation should be pointed out on the other hand, that decreasing replicated tests aids the clients and patients and not clinicians so there is a misalignment of inducements. In addition, a primary study using electronic order entry showed that simply demonstrating past outcomes reduced duplication and the cost of testing by only 13%.
With the emergence of Healthcare IT industry, comprehensive patient care has become facile and efficient as healthcare providers use the patient records which are saved in EHR by expanding access to different specialties and improve the quality of life. Currently, about 78.4 % 1 of hospitals in US are using EHR systems which consist of enormous amount of data storage related to patient records, hospital administration, digital medical imaging diagnostics & treatment procedures. Present medical practices are involved in digitalizing files and implementing electronic medical records through virtualization and cloud computing methods, for this data to be stored and retrieved back for future use when needed. But on the flip side, these process
Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are now exercising a more significant impact on healthcare practices than ever before. The United States healthcare system stands on the brink of a new age of electronic health information technology. The potential for innovation within this new technology represents a great opportunity for the future of medicine. However, in seeking to implement EMRs caution must be exercised to ensure that implementation does not have adverse effects on the personal nature of the patient-physician relationship an important issue that must be addressed in order preserve the integrity of healthcare in the new electronic age.
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).
Electronic health records, along with everything have their disadvantages, however it is clear from this essay that the advantages of EHRs are second to none. EHRs create a link for communication with patients which allows providers to deliver sufficient care, meaning they can carry out their job correctly and that patients can receive the adequate care that they may need. Electronic health records also improve patient outcomes when recovering from an illness. The transparency of EHRs between care providers means that the patient’s welfare is always of optimum importance and that nothing should be missed when providing care for a patient, thus, improving their quality of life and their outcome for recovery. Finally, EHRs minimise the risk of mismanagement of documentations and reduce the chance of mistake by a misinterpretation of handwriting, which is obviously beneficial for patients. There is no doubt that electronic health records will be of great advantage and benefit to patients as highlighted throughout this