EHR In Healthcare

With the vast growth in the healthcare population and medical technology over recent decades, patient health care as well as medical records continue to become more complex and require a more efficient means of data collection and abstraction amongst healthcare providers. In addition, ensuring efficient communication between various health care professionals has become a tedious task in providing high quality care and safety in health care. Paper medical records has become to encounter many obstacles in efforts to keep up with today’s broad and complex health care system and medical technology as well as efforts to maintain cost effectiveness. History of paper medical records began in the 1920s as a basic note that doctors
$2.3 trillion health care bill is for administration. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report stating that “health care in the United States is not as safe as it should be.” In fact, the IOM claimed that medical errors resulted in approximately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths each year (IOM, 1999). The IOM also stated that most of those errors were most often caused by faulty systems and processes that led to health team members making mistakes (IOM, 1999). Mason et al. (2016) claims that “the changing U.S. health care system is dependent on the use of the EHR.” As the benefits of using EHRs became evidently clear to Congress, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was passed in 2009 to promote the adoption of EHR use. The HITECH Act allotted $35 billion in reimbursements to incentivize health care providers to integrate health information technology (HIT). As with any policy change, each has its advantages and disadvantages. Integrating the use of the EHR provides many benefits to both health care providers as well as patients. In providing quality patient care, using an EHR can provide improved workflow as well as better organization. The EHR makes it easier to retrieve patient information needed for ensuring continuum of quality care. In addition, quick access to patient information saves time and is cost beneficial as well as preventing
A CDSS is a technology system that consists of a variety of tools that aid providers in key decision making in patient care. Providers can use the system to key in pertinent patient data as well as clinical symptoms and receive guidance on proper clinic-based decision making. Addison, Whitcombe, & Glover (2012) found that health care providers that use a CDSS can gain quicker access to important medical diagnostic and plan of care information in providing high quality patient care and improving patient outcomes. While the recent vast inflation of medical textbook information can lead any provider to go into information overload, electronic resources can help synthesize patient-related information and provide clinical guidance in the decision-making process with patient clinical encounters. (Addison et al., 2012). EHRs can prove very beneficial in flagging potential safety issues. Many times, patients are prescribed and/or given medication that they are allergic to and sometimes can be fatal. With providers that use EHRs in practice, they can more smoothly analyze patient information. And EHRs can be programmed to alert providers of allergies if/when they inadvertently order one as well as any potential adverse