Electronic Health Records

Posted: August 25th, 2021

Electronic Health Records

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Institution of Affiliation

Electronic Health Records

Data constitute an essential element in medical care, which influence the level of services rendered. Health records utilize voluminous data that require continuous reassessment when the patient seeks medical attention. Equally, the information helps the practitioners in making vital medical decisions. As a result, digitization of such information plays a crucial role in enhancing the quality of services. Electronic health records define all health-related documents in digital form. As such, this process requires several steps for useful collection and management. The implementation of electronic health records results in some advantages for both the organization and practitioners such as enhanced quality and productivity;however, the application faces certain limitations.

Electronic health records are the computer system that creates, stores, manages, and aids in accessing, editing, and sharing electronic health files. It consists of four essential elements that determine the actual tasks involved. Healthcare, clinical support, information sharing, and quality measures constitute some of these elements (Kruse, Stein, Thomas, & Kaur,2018). Healthcare involves the collection, storage, and access to health-related data. Clinical support provides refined information that informs the patients on practitioner’s decisions based on the provided data. Information sharing feature enables different parties to access relevant information from their end. It ensures that billing department and related organizations access relevant billing data whereas the patient may access personal files such as lab reports. The system avails such information to the relevant organizations for seamless integration with healthcare component. The quality measure focuses solely on enhancing the efficient and effective process that guarantees a high level of health services rendered. All these four elements interactively work together to enhance service rendered to the patients.

Electronic health records enhance the ease of access to data, which fastens the medical care process. Reference to previous medical data including history, demographics, and likely past lab results constitutes some of the areas of concern for any visit. Manual retrieval of such information consumes a significant amount of time. However, the adoption of electronic health records simplifies the work and makes it faster to access such information (Hoover, 2016). Besides, medical practitioners share the reports, which enables improvingthe treatment of the same patient in different healthcare outlets. It helps the organization improve health quality, enhance safety, increase productivity, increase returns, help analyze patterns and planning, and improve confidentiality. Medical practitioners access relevant data and thus benefit from the system through patient support, enhanced communications, guided and orderly administrative processes, reports, and decision support. However, implementation of the system faces several challenges.

 Electronic health records like other information systems face challenges during and after implementation. Some of the obstacles that hinder the full realization of the positive outcomes include resistance, business related problems, cost, and legal issues. Electronic health records face opposition from both clinicians and patients. Patients consider data stored electronically unsafe and accessible to third parties. Equally, some of the patients feel unsatisfied when involved in the electronic recording of diagnosis. In particular, privacy, security, and quality of information are the significant areas of the patient’s concerns (Yanamadala, Morrison, Curtin, McDonald, & Hernandez-Boussard, 2016). Equally, the lack of necessary and adequate information among the clinicians decreases the acceptance rate. The cost of implementation, maintenance, frequent updates, and safety of the system remain quite high, which reduces the returns made by the firm. Most companies outsource electronic health records system from third parties. The implementation of these systems and maintenance consume a significant amount of resources. Electronic systems face numerous legal issues such as information sharing with researchers and third parties.

Electronic health record are a system of records that integrates data management, clinical support, information sharing, and quality measures. It offers support to the administration and practitioners as well as other organizations that aid in service delivery. It, therefore presents several benefits like enhanced data access, improved quality healthcare, and informed decision for clinicians. On the other hand, the implementation faces some limitations like low acceptance rate, high costs of enforcement, business-related issues, and legal redress.

References

Hoover, R. (2016). Benefits of using an electronic health record. Nursing, 46(7), 21-22. Retrieved fromhttps://journals.lww.com/nursing/Fulltext/2016/07000/Benefits_of_using_an_electronic_health_record.6.aspx

Kruse, C. S., Stein, A., Thomas, H., & Kaur, H. (2018). The use of electronic health records to support population health: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Medical Systems, 42(11), 214. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6182727/

Yanamadala, S., Morrison, D., Curtin, C., McDonald, K., & Hernandez-Boussard, T. (2016). Electronic health records and quality of care: An observational study modeling impact on mortality, readmissions, and complications. Medicine,96(19), e3332. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4902473/