EHR In Health Care

“The HIPPA Privacy Rule gives you rights over your own health information, regardless of its form” (Rodriguez, L, Dec,2011). Whether the medical record is paper or electronic form, we must take measures to protect it. HIPAA requires covered providers to appoint a policy and security officer. This person(s) or employee(s) will be responsible for creating, documenting and maintaining the privacy and security practices/policies that meet HIPAA requirements.

EHRs have also changed healthcare by increasing productivity. Now health care professionals are not having to order scan or test multiple times due to results not being able to be located. One additional way that EHRs have changed the healthcare industry is by increase patient satisfactions. Patients like that their healthcare providers are easily up to date on the facts of their health information. Healthcare IT is now considered as a essential factor of a high-quality healthcare system (Wager, Lee, Glaser, 2013).

Physicians use of EHR at Sutter Health created a positive impact especially in communication with regards to a patient’s condition or an order, which used to be a challenge to interpret due to illegible handwriting and unstandardized phrase. Furthermore, Epic has an integrated program for medication ordering which provides suggested dosing, route, and frequency, as well as alerts for possible allergic reaction. Additionally, the use of voice recognition software for progress notes dictation in EHR saved most of the physicians’ time, and the tools available for references on clinical practice guidelines are conveniently linked in the Epic program.

I have worked in the medical field for over 20 years and have personally seen the evolution of EHR. For me, it started in 1999 when I was working out in San Diego at the Naval Hospital. We were the first military hospital to have EHR implemented into our whole facility. Of course, that took some time, clinics were not done all at once more like one per month. After each clinic had been updated, we had trainers stay around in each department to assist us with any issues we would have, which were a lot. We found out clinics within the hospital could not “talk” to each other when it came to EHR. We would still have to have the patients record come up from the record room or if they were an established patient, pull their “shadow record”

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,

In order to ensure a successful EHR implementation, a health care organization must undergo all the phases of an information system development lifecycle: analysis and planning, design, implementation, and finally, support and evaluation. Without careful planning and project management by dedicated staff who are champions of the system, it is sure to be less than expected. For the purpose of this assignment, it is assumed that the organization is in the final stages of the design phase and is presented with choosing a vendor system from a selection of the five EHR systems listed in the table above. Although the information in the table was not acquired form requests for proposals as it would be if this were a formal system acquisition, but

If the plan is to openly share information with these other institutions; patients of the hospitals need to be informed of this plan and sign a consent form. If a patient doesn't want their information shared, the institution's ability to see into this patient's record should be restricted. In a similar manner, not everyone in the institution should have access to the hospital EHR, but only an authorized point person such as the case manager or admissions person. A policy should be made that when the institution wants information on a patient they need to put in a formal request and a small statement why. This way the institution only has access to those patients and the reason that they need access has been validated. This helps insure patient's

In evaluating the plans of the Leonard Williams Medical Center (LWMC) and its subsidiary business entity, the Williams Medical Services (WMS), the overall objective is to implement new technology in the form of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system in order to streamline workflow, provide safe and quality care for patients and remain competitive with other healthcare facilities in providing these components with the use of advanced technology. The implementation of an EMR is the desire of the physician group, WMS, who refuses to listen to

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.

Technology has come a long way over the years and continues to advance rapidly. The health care system is greatly affected by the advancements in technology. An example of this would be the use of electronic health records (EHR). In this paper I will be describing the electronic health record system. How my facility has initiated the EHR with following the six steps and describe meaningful use and how my facility is working towards this. Lastly I will discuss how to maintain patient confidentiality with use of EHR, and what my facility is doing to prevent HIPPA violations.

Vartak. S., & et al. Conducted a research to assess the impact of implementing EHR on processes of care and outcomes in the ED. The ED patient visit log files were used to examine changes in patients’ ED length of stay (LOS). Along with the implementation of the EHR, there was an average increase of 17 minutes (15%) in LOS. One of the objectives of EHR implementation was to reduce the ED LOS by speeding up quick-registration, the triage process, and room assignment. Prior to implementation a patient would typically be seen by a triage nurse and then go to registration where there could be some wait if the ED registration was busy. After EHR implementation, a patient goes directly from triage with quick- registration to an exam room without waiting for full registration procedures. The quick-registration process captures eight items of patient essential data to establish the EHR for a patient at the door or in-route by ambulance/helicopter. The full registration is then completed at the bedside afterwards. This process should reduce LOS. However, moving the registration earlier in the process at or before the patient arrives on site, may make the LOS appear longer, even though the patient does not actually spend longer in the ED, since the LOS begins when the time stamp is activated at quick-registration and triage.

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 technology is a large improvement in the health care with efficiency. The improvements can impact

Living in a world full of technology, more and more of us are overall connected to computerizing, and we expect it to do everything for us. Many years before we didn 't have technology, and mostly everyone was into making it. Now if we look at our world, everything is mostly done online. More Canadians do shopping online, students receive more knowledge about the subject their learning online, booking hotels, flights, and even do schooling online. Though looking after all this, most patients in Canada are still handed with paper based records. When we go to the doctor, most of us still receive handwritten prescriptions and our records are unrecognized.

Overall the toolkit should demonstrate the improvements of EHR in healthcare organization’s perspective. These implementation process are optimal and necessary incorporating the useful resources for physicians to practice. Therefore, the culture of healthcare organizations is extremely important for a number of reasons to succeed the implementation of EHRs, such as engaged staff members level, the investment of workflow analysis to improve the efficiency of the resources collected, create systems to improve the quality of care among patients as providers exchange their information, provide resources so the training staff members can receive consistent treatment and maintenance, and incorporating staff members to be engaged towards