Effectiveness of EHR’s in healthcare facilities (Response)
QUESTION
The use of the electronic health record (EHR) is very useful. It has made accessing patient records easier than ever. With the use of EHR, information sharing has enabled patients to take their medication charts with them. According to the European Journal of Public Health, the use of EHR’s in hospitals has shown to reduce medication errors, increased policy compliance, and increased efficiency (Campanella et al., 2015). In practice, it is great to be able to easily see the trending of vital signs as well as lab results. Also, I have horrible handwriting and with EHR I don’t have to be diligent to make my handwriting larger and easier to read!
Professor Sherman
Campanella, P., Lovato, E., Marone, C., Fallacara, L., Mancuso, A., Ricciardi, W., & Specchia, M.L. (2015). The impact of electronic health records on healthcare quality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Public Health, 26(1), doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckv122
Effectiveness of EHR’s in healthcare facilities (Response)
ANSWER
Effectiveness of EHR’s in healthcare facilities (Response)
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I concur with professor Sherman’s notion on the usefulness of EHR’S in healthcare facilities. A solid comparison between these EHR systems and the traditional record keeping systems, depicts the efficiency and effectiveness created by EHR systems. A notable consideration, however, is the need to uphold patient privacy standards, as laid out in the nursing code of conduct (Kaipio et al., 2019). It is essential for health practitioners to undertake all necessary measures to ensure that patient data is only accessed by authorized personnel. Another consideration, is to ensure that the data is regularly backed up and updated so as to minimize chances of working with outdated data, or also the possibilities of data loss.
I also tend to agree on the fact that, the overall usefulness of EHR systems, improves the overall quality of patient care by ten folds. A patient, for example, will experience faster medical services from nursing practitioners as they would just need to check their records online, instead of wasting time consulting other nurses on previous diagnosis and other information essential for patient treatment (Spatar et al., 2019). An analysis of the EHR system, therefore, shows that its benefits exceed its limitations and, as such, should be thoroughly implemented in all healthcare facilities accordingly.
The only limitation that nurse practitioners might have with EHR systems is, the challenges in maneuvering the system and performing basic and essential functions with it. As such, active training is essential as it would ensure that the nurse practitioners are briefed, in detail, on how to use the system in order to maximize its usefulness. I, therefore, am of the opinion that EHR’s have revolutionized the process of care delivery and hence raised the quality standards of patient care gradually.
References
Kaipio, J., Hyppönen, H., & Lääveri, T. (2019, March). Physicians’ Experiences on EHR Usability: A Time Series from 2010, 2014 and 2017. In ITCH (pp. 194-199).
Spatar, D., Kok, O., Basoglu, N., & Daim, T. (2019). Adoption factors of electronic health record systems. Technology in Society, 58, 101144.