Ambulatory Care Essay

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

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.

Muhammed H. (2015) conducted a study to determine the relationship between EHRs and patient safety. According to the researcher, EHRs are healthcare applications that digitize patient information and clinical workflows. It may be considered as a data repository that stores patient data, and assists providers by providing reference information and recommendations for care. Furthermore it enables providers to electronically place orders and consolidate clinical notes across hospital departments. The results showed that about 70% of hospitals in PA adopted advanced EHRs since 2012 and there has been a 27% decline in patient safety events

HITECH are laws that were created to support the transition to electronic health records. These laws support the healthcare organization technology, with proper training centers and programs. HITECH helps reinforce HIPAA’s privacy and security laws with EHR.

As the emergence of electronic health records (EHRs), the subject of transforming the delivery method of healthcare is prominent in the United States. The use of EHRs is a major key in the way physicians practice in healthcare organizations through communication and management of patient information. Henricks (2011) points out that EHRs are a part of an objective aimed at improving all aspects of health care and reducing health disparities, making the healthcare of patients and families appealing to them, refining the direction of healthcare, along with population and public health improvement, continuation of privacy maintenance and the security of health information, and finally reducing costs. In the perspective of health information technology

EHR is an electronic version of a patient’s chart that can be distributed among all the healthcare providers, agencies, and many facilities. As one of the articles states “the benefits of an electronic health record include a gain in healthcare efficiencies, large gains in quality and safety, and lower healthcare costs for consumers.” Individuals in EHR practices provides better quality care and outcomes, improves patient safety, and anybody benefits from it “regardless of their insurance status, whether privately insured, uninsured, or covered by Medicare or Medicaid.” As you mentioning great aspect of controlling costs is documentation of patient care. The care coordinator who deals mostly with insurances at the facility I work at, she relies

Electronic retrieval of patient demographics, allergies, current medications, complete medical history, diagnostic and radiologic results, etc. occurs by clicking a few buttons. Electronic patient charts provide quick and easy access to physicians, hospitals, independent labs, and pharmacies. EHRs allow simultaneous access by independent providers and allow a collaborative effort for health care management of the patient. “EHRs are the next step in the continued progress of healthcare that can strengthen the relationship between patients and clinicians”. (Electronic Health Records Overview, 2011)

Giving the facts from the Real-World Case by purchasing the same EHR system as Community Hospital, physicians have confidence that they will have better control of care over their patients. In addition, they will be able to write orders, advise medications and also have the capability to get into the providers EHR systems while covering in other specific areas of the hospital. For this reason, some pros of the EHR consist of better patient care, better-quality care coordination, upgraded diagnostics and patient outcomes and the applying of a computerized physician order entry; this allows in the decrease of transcript mistakes related to poor writing on behalf of the physicians for either procedures or prescriptions. (HealthIT, 2015) Regrettably, there is also a downside, as not all areas of the hospital, such as the Physical Therapy unit, Nurse’s station and Nutrition department are ready to engage with the new technology.

The use EHR systems has both positive and negative impact on individual health information because of the risk exposures such as hacking, privacy violations, etc. associated with EHR systems. On a positive note, the use of EHR has increase coordination of care, patient-provider relationships through patient portals. creating and monitoring quality

Today, the patient will visit the same doctor and the doctor will enter the data into a tablet or pc. The EHR is a designed very similar to the paper chart, but is programmed to collect and segregate the information in different formats to transmit securely to the necessary partners. Those partners include insurance carriers, public health entities, clearinghouses, laboratories, and pharmacist. This data is collected and stored on secure servers. In most EHR’s today, a doctor who has a private practice, and maybe affiliated with a hospital has the ability to allow the hospital to access a patient’s record, if that patient has agreed to release their information to the hospitals. So if the patient is taken to the local hospital, the hospital can have access to the patient’s records if an authorization is in place. The EHR will not only collect the patient medical information, it will track the medical information. Providers are required to secure the information and track the medical records activity via a built-in audit system that will show the medical records history and the name of all parties that access the patient’s records. Poor EHR system design and improper use can cause EHR-related errors that jeopardize the integrity of the information in the EHR, leading to errors that endanger patient safety or decrease the quality of care. These unintended consequences also may increase fraud and abuse and can have

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are changing the way health care is delivered to patients, not just how patient medical information is stored. In the recent past, patient-doctor visits consisted of handwritten multiple medical forms to be completed, and most times duplicated. There were several areas of concern with past patient record keeping, omission of important care information, medical interventions and prescribed medication were missed in certain cases, erroneously prescribed or duplicated and records were lost or misplaced. EHR facilities and improves the quality of care by refining access to patient record by multiple health care providers and the patient; better decision support; reporting occurs in real time and is legible which

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,

How EHR can Reduce Liability in Healthcare Introduction The electronic health records (EHR) which would include electronic medical files, guidelines, and prescriptions for the purposes of medical support are modalities of medical record which are not confined to storage of medical information concerning the patient. The EHR allows ranges of possibilities including analyses and comparisons of results of examination and other data from a mechanism of information management that is aimed at the promotion of efficiency and speedy solution. The EHR system also makes it possible for computerized prescriptions and computerized healthcare instruction. It also advances the communication systems within the medical team.

First, one of the clinical outcomes of implementing EHR is to improve quality of care by reducing medication errors. Research has shown that the use of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems led to a reduction of 55% of serious medication errors. In addition, the use of clinical decision support (CDS) tools helped decrease 32% of medication errors related to the prescription of antibiotics outside the recommended dosage range. Therefore, states with lowest meaningful use put their patients at increased risks for medication errors. In fact, hospitals with the highest rates of meaningful use adoption were able to reduce their adverse drug events by 52% whereas the hospitals with the lowest rates of meaningful use implementation

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).