Using An Outdated Legacy System

Integration will lead to superior diagnoses as doctors will have access to medical records from across the country, enabling them to draw on the diagnoses of other doctors facing similar situations. It will also allow for seamless care as records for the same patients will be instantly accessible and fully up to date wherever they go. The application layer will be standardized, with a consumer-facing mobile and web application and a doctor-facing web portal. While the way care is administered differs from hospital to hospital and clinic to clinic, what a practitioner needs from an IT solution will remain relatively constant.

The main reason institutions are switching to the new technology of exchanging health information is specifically to reduce costs and help improve health care quality. In this case study that is what San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center wanted exactly, to effortlessly exchange patient’s medical information. San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center which is a rural hospital in Alamosa Colorado is one of the many hospitals and providers that can benefit from this change. In 2004 AHRQ signed a contract to the University of Colorado Health and sciences Center, which later on developed a point-of-care inquiry system for four healthcare organizations in the Denver region. The system allowed emergency room clinicians within the four locations to exchange medical data. They were able to sufficiently and rapidly retrieve and send patient medical histories, x-rays, medication lists, and all problem lists. The AHRQ contract also help started the development of the

In today’s cyber environment everything is that the tip of society’s fingertip and healthcare is not the exception. Every organization from hospitals to the local family doctor’s office is realizing the cost savings and convenience of having a medical system in place that can store, track, audit, and maintain a patient’s history. Such technology is mutually beneficial to patients alike since searching for providers becomes much easier when login into a medical portal allows the user to find specialist of all sorts without much hassle.

Users requiring medical care, typically will find the nearest facility providing the services they require, and must contact the clinic to initiate an appointment request. Once the individual has arrived to attend the appointment, instead of promptly receiving care, the individual must fill out many forms to meet the protocol that all patients must be expected to complete. Research from the International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security Research, studied the lacking functionality of the current healthcare system, the authors studied the effectiveness of a mobile program.“The current system is

Today’s healthcare organizations have changed, mirroring or leading the changes seen in their enterprise counterparts. Organizations have become widely distributed, and most don’t have a dedicated IT staff. At the same time, most clinics or distributed sites require connectivity to hospital resources/applications, and reliable, high speed wireless networks to function. The mobile nature of caregivers and the growing use of networked imaging and video in patient care settings make an affordable, easy to manage network mission critical.

The centralized point for the patient information is an integral segment of the clinical transformation. Once an office has transfer from paper-based records to the electronic, he or she will make the records more accessible and easy to obtain through the Tablet PC. With a Tablet PC, doctors along with other medical staff can update a patient's record even when he or she is away from his or her workstation. The Tablet PC will increase the doctor's mobility because; he or she will be able to access the information virtually anywhere, which they would not have to depend on the nurses to pull the charts.

Georgia Medical Center has ten physicians clinics that can benefit from the patient portal. Now that the organization has transitioned to Cerner powercharts electronic medical records, the organization can now focus on implementing Cerner patient portal and its benefits. “A patient portal is a secure website that gives patients convenient 24 hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an internet connection” (“What is patient portal?” n.d.) The doctor's clinics of GA Medical Center have 500 to 600 patients seen by the providers for various conditions. Patient portal will be a patient friendly tool designed to help the patients manage their own records and be able to communicate with their provider (Goldzweing, 2013).

This type of technology would provide information on the general practice, medical specialty, radiology, pharmacy, and laboratory data which relates to the patient. Health care providers would be able to access patient information, diagnostic images, test results, medication, and medical history and patients would be able to access their own information with ease from their home environment (Jones & Donelle, 2011). Although electronic health records would provide little effort for health care workers to access information, there are and will continue to be challenges with the implementation of the product without a hands-on approach (Jones & Donelle,

Patient portals can be customized to meet the needs of each provider's office. From a staff's perspective, patient portal will streamline the front desk worklow in terms of registering the patient, appointments, and sending reminders to the patients. As patients will be utilizing the portal to make a follow up appointment or requesting a refill on the medication, staff will be taking less and less calls. Staff members will be provided with adequate education and training on portals. In the end, staff members will be satisfied to see a decline in phone calls to refill medications or to reschedule an appointment. Staff time will be utilized in other areas that an benefit the patient outcomes.

EHR programs in the medical office has many advantages it is an upsurge in electronic social networking, instant communications, and demand for the immediate availability of information. When patients come to the medical clinic it can be stressful and sometimes frustrating, to deal with lost files, forms not completed, or when the patient is impatient. The new EHR program in medical offices will provide security, accessibility, and will be available when needed. Access to personal medical information across the internet has become a need, not only for healthcare providers, but also for the patients. EHR will bring tremendous benefits to patients care and to healthcare providers. It will bring enhanced accessibility to clinical information,

There are many advantages with the implementation of electronic medical records for the patient. One important advantage is the ability for the patient’s medical record to be shared amongst the patients other physicians. Information that can be shared includes recent labs, diagnostic testing, and prescribed medication. Another advantage is patients are provided access to certain medical information in his or her medical record through a patient portal. This allows patients to have a more active role in their health care. One disadvantage for patients is many feel that once electronic medical records are implemented, office visits become less personal due to the medical assistant, nurse, and/or physician is too busy answering questions on a computer or tablet.

Technology is changing the way healthcare is delivered. Palms West Hospital and all of HCA hospitals are making every effort to exceed patient’s expectations with a variety of technology and different information systems. Some of the services offered by HCA East Florida Hospitals include Patient Portal, which gives instant access to patient’s health information. This service is accessible 24/7 and lets patient’s lab/radiology reports, medication instructions, discharge summaries, automatic bill pay, health libraries, registering for classes and even upcoming patient appointments with HCA affiliated physician offices. JFK Hospital offers both Cyber Knife for tumors and Robotic Surgery for Urology, Gynecology, and General Surgery.

For a medium-sized urban hospital with 160 beds and 1,500 associates to be able to gain the trust and confidence of patients and compete with mega-hospitals in the healthcare industry, the management of the hospital would have to explore new technologies that would enhance the quality of services and patient care rendered to customers. Further, to ensure that all the departments in the hospitals such as ICUs, mother & baby, emergency services, radiology, oncology, surgery, and operating room (OR) would have to function efficiently and improve the patient experience. New EMR application would improve the security of patient’s information and ensure timely retrieval of medical records such that the quality of diagnosis would be enhanced significantly. As the IT director, it is my responsibility to make sure that the hospital system has a robust IT network that would enable efficient information flow within

It is important to understand that using electronic health system helps physicians to provide a more accurate diagnosis which helps to reduce medical errors and incorrect diagnosis which make patients very happy knowing that physicians have their best interest at heart (Kudyba, 2010). In electronic health system, information is structured and well organized in a manner that helps to eliminate the time spent searching for information. Moreover, patients are very happy since electronic health system helps to provide privacy and security of patients’ information and data so as to eliminate the problem of leaving patients’ information unattended on papers so that unauthorized personnel can see and

While software selection criteria were not in scope for this effort, it does warrant discussion on the overall availability of specialty software for the medical industry on iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Currently, most of the “MCA’s” or Medical Clinical Assistant platforms operate in a Windows-only environment, as do most of the key medical records and billing platforms in the medical field. The cost of custom software development to build a mobile solution is far beyond the budget of most local hospitals and not an endeavor to be undertaken lightly.