The Pros And Cons Of Electronic Health Records
Electronic health records may be a current trend that is happening today in the modern world. While electronic health records are not fully implemented in the United States of America where majority of hospitals still uses paper-based health records. There are a few reasons why electronic health records may not be implemented yet with reasons like cost, time, the staff needs to be trained in order to use the software for electronic health records, and some physicians may be resistance to change. Nonetheless, electronic health records can be a very powerful tool that can help utilizes the relationship between a patient and their physician. With paper-based health records, they take up physical space as they are stored, and there is a chance
…show more content…
of misplacing that information, which creates unnecessary risks. The patients are the number one consumers in healthcare business field, because without the patients there would be no money coming in and without money there would not be a business. A patient comes in various shapes and forms as they may need to be treated, get vaccinated, or have a check up if they are required to have one or they are concerned with something. Of course, not every patient may have an opportunity to efficiently use electronic health records if they were given that option. In order to benefit from using electronic communication, the patients would need to have computer and internet access while they have the capacity to understand the computer and health literacy, and numeracy. It is also possible that the patients may need to be confident with their printed communications skills, faith in doctors or the healthcare organization. For a person who may be educationally, economically, or socially disadvantaged is less probable to utilize electronic tools. That creates an unequal distribution for these groups of population, and they would miss out the benefits. There are racial and education disparities in the use of portals. At Cleveland Clinic, the account was more likely to be used by whites compared to blacks. If electronic portals become functional and available for the whole population, there is a potential of disproportionate access to portal accounts. The disparities from this should be at least minimized ensuring the population all has equal access. Policies may be needed to make sure the patients are regular users to access the portal (Ancker, 2011). The inequality use of access is an important issue, and there needs to be policies to make sure that everyone has the ability to access the portal to obtain their health information. Understandably, this kind of effort to ensure everyone has the ability to access is a tough task but nonetheless it can be accomplished. These policies need to be implemented before the situation gets worse otherwise all of the time would be wasted. The conventional paper charts create a very rather limited way to capture, store, and to share medical information, which contributes to medical errors in medical care.
Accessing to medical records is limited by the cost, time, and the difficulty of copying and carrying bulky paper-based records. The patients are often hesitant to ask for their access to their paper records while they are hospitalized. The patients’ motives may be misunderstood by caregivers. Electronic health records were created to address these limitations. Personal health records are designed in a way for the patients to access, and handle their own medical information. Unfortunately, the complexity to import multimedia hospital data while configuring and maintaining the record system is important. There are barriers to adopt, which is why the complexity of electronic health records are significant. An electronic health record that is based on the web while patient accessible may be designed by a medical team and clinical electronic health record would be a subsection. The program would be open for the patients, and the patients are instructed to use the web-based record while they are hospitalized. The system also is designed to automatically record each log in by each patient or family. It records the date, time, and determined the number of views for every page. As a result, the patients obtained the system at each hour throughout the day and there was more access to their records while they were in …show more content…
the hospital compared to after discharge (Burke, 2010). The article shows a lot of valuable information about electronic health records, and the patients’ behavior with electronic health records. The fact that they checked their records often while being hospitalized more often compared to after discharge says a lot. It shows that patients routinely check their information using an electronic tool rather than asking for their paper-based records every time. A family member also logs in to stay informed of the situation. The patient may have different experiences when it comes to handling their personal health records whether it is electronic or paper-based.
Also, the experiences have been shown to affect the quality of healthcare by influencing patient satisfaction. It helps the business’s improvement and it creates better positive outcomes. After implementing electronic health records, the 70% of the patients expressed that they wanted to have e-mail communication with their doctors’ office, and they were satisfied with their experience utilizing electronic health records. The patients were more likely to recognize the benefits of electronic health records. The patients with internet access were concerned about privacy. However with older patients and patients with noticeable low levels of education or have chronic diseases were notably less probable to use the internet. This also creates an inconsistency. Practices should consistently document patient communication selections to accommodate communications and to refine patient experiences. Patients without internet access typically were less satisfied with their experiences. They expressed that they had longer wait times for appointments, and communication with their doctor’s office in a less timely fashion. The adoption of electronic health records will effectively increase the healthcare system through decreased unnecessary utilization of healthcare services (De Leon,
2012). It seems like a lot of patients are happy with electronic health records, and they are able to see the benefits from it. Unfortunately, for older patients and patients with low levels of education or have chronic diseases may not have the ability to access their information right away through technology. Teaching someone who is not adequate with using technological tools is no easy feat. It takes time, and energy to train someone, and it would be very helpful to have a user friendly interface. The disparities are commonly noticed in patient portal enrollment. There was a contrast from the use within the patient portal in terms of seeking an advice from the providers. It means there were no racial or ethnic disparities. Female patients and patients’ age that are 35 years and older tend to be more probable to look for the provider’s advice. They were also more likely to request medication refills. Some of the patients were provided access to an electronic patient portal by their physicians; around one third of the patients did not take up on the offer. Patients that are 65 years and older were more probable to look for the provider’s guidance and medication refills once they are enrolled in contrast to those younger than 35 years. There was no noticeable difference in enrollment by sex although females were more probable to ask for the provider’s guidance compared to males (Goel, 2011). The lack of gender difference of enrollment is very interesting, because women tend to go to the doctor or ask for advice every time they notice something wrong with their body. There was no disparity when it comes to asking for the doctor’s advice, and that says a lot because people want to make sure that they are healthy. That can be said the same for medication refills, because people needs to get their medication refilled as soon as possible. According to the survey, many users showed that the application, which is called My Chart, was easy to use. Their medical record information was thorough, accurate, and understandable. Only a few users were concerned about the confidentiality of their information or about seeing unusual test results after getting an explanatory electronic message from their provider. The patients said that they liked e-mail communication as some form of interaction while they also preferred in-person communication for others such as getting treatment instructions. The patients did not like telephone or written communication. This contradicts the physicians’ preference in form of communication. They prefer telephone communication over e-mail communication (Hassol, 2004). The difference between the patients and the physicians in terms of communication is very strange and unusual, because the quality of healthcare relies on a good relationship between them. E-mail is the easiest form of communication, and the message is automatically saved unless it is deleted. With telephone communication, there are a lot of barriers since someone else may answer the telephone or the doctor is not available at the time so they have to call at another time. That can be really frustrating sometime. Then again with e-mails, some people have the tendency to type out their message in a way that is brief with slang words. And, the lack of tone makes the communication easily misinterpreted. Electronic health record adoption rates differ depending on the type of practice of primary care provider. Uninsured, Black and Hispanic or Latino patients were less probable to have primary care providers that use electronic health records. This can be said the same for Hispanic or Latino Medicaid patients. If adoption of clinical health information technology is askew, the benefits of this new technology possibly could not be provided to the underserved. Federally qualified health centers are granted to serve poor and uninsured patients, the disparity of electronic health record adoption was 47% lower among federally qualified health centers serving a huge proportion of uninsured patients compared with federally qualified health centers serving lesser uninsured patients. There is little information about the diffusion of clinical health information technology through providers to the underserved, or about the impact of health information technology adoption on underserved patients in general (Hing, 2009). That little information needs to be investigated more to make sure the patients receive proper health care along with the access of electronic health record through the patient portal. Medicaid should be able to provide the physicians electronic health records. At least, there should be something available for these patients, because 47% is a big percentage considering it is almost half in larger uninsured patients. And, this is under federal qualified health centers too. The healthcare system is broken up in pieces due to clinicians’ failure to inform necessary health services due to an oversight, little time, and competing demands. The patients also may not be aware of the knowledge about healthcare services, abysmal desire to get services, or face logistical challenges. With the computer technology in the modern world, the paper-based systems converted into electronic formats. It allowed for websites and software products available for patients to input information through typing in their medical information. The patients are able to communicate with their clinicians through messaging services, so they can improve their health. However, the information and clinical terminology need to be modified into lay language. Clinical information without any interpretation or context does not notify the patients what they need to do to improve their health. A few of the personal health records are starting to supply simple interpretation. Personal health record shows a list to a patient based on age and gender of when they got the test and when it is demanded by the due date set up on rules designated by the practice. This is inefficient, because the patient has a complex personal history, which complicates things. This unreliability and issues need to be given to parties, the clinicians and the patients that let them to determine the best for them. Lastly, personal health records should assist to allow the patients and clinicians to take actions on suggestions. All of the information depends on the patient’s situations, which may include supplies that are educational, decisions aids, risk calculators, logistical with support, and prompts. All of these factors can be arranged into personal health records (Krist, 2011). The elimination factor could be really helpful in terms of specifying the possible diseases at a certain age and gender. That could help the patient to stay healthy, so they can avoid getting a disease. It could help reduce the mortality rate if a patient sees something concerning, they would go and visit the doctor right away. Of course the design is not perfect in terms of potential errors that could create panics for the wrong reasons. All of the other information could be added to make sure that the information fits to what’s right for the patient. It takes a lot of effort and work to design something like this. There is no doubt that universal electronic health records are the unavoidable technological advance in the computerized communications age. A network of nationally linked electronic health record systems is somewhat rare, but they are being developed throughout the world. These countries are Canada, Australia, the United States, and Britain. There are potential advantages of storing and sharing patient information electronically, because of improved legibility and effective access to medical records, quality would be improved and safety of medical services, lowering healthcare costs, improved population-level health and increased health research. Unfortunately, as long there are potential advantages, there are also potential risks, which must be reduced if electronic health records are to be publically accepted and universally implemented. This is no easy task due to ethical and political challenges by electronic health records. These issues are citizens’ rights over their ownership of their own medical data, terms of using personal or anonymous health records that can be utilized for medical treatment and research. Also, there are concerns regarding the security of electronic databases and the socio-political insinuations of a database for the surveillance society. Personal privacy and security are complicated and its complications may present barriers to public acceptance of storing and sharing personal health information (Luchenski, 2012). The concept of universal electronic health records sounds like it would be very helpful for people that often travel across countries. It can also help prevent diseases if possible from invading other countries. There always has been an issue about that especially over the past few years. Electronic health records may be difficult to implement in third world countries due to lack of money to invest something like this. As for political challenges, this is not easy for the countries to open up and share private sensitive information with other countries. This is incredibly not safe if some countries are willing to manipulate or cheat the system. There is a portal called Clinical Focus, and it is a search box allowing a combined search of selected online information tools. The survey was used to measure the usefulness and the impact by collecting feedback about users’ experience, and the survey intents on the type of clinicians using this tool. It assessed user satisfaction and recognized impact on patient care decision making. The survey results propose the many of the respondents found Clinical easy to navigate, the content was easy to read and the retrieved information is relevant and complete. Many of the respondents would recommend Clinical Focus to their colleagues. This tool shows a promising future development based on the results (Tannery, 2011). There is a lot of software that is being developed, and feedback is constantly needed from the surveys. It is positive that majority of respondents expressed good things about Clinical Focus. The idea of simplicity and easy to use is always popular with a lot of people. Not many people like to do something that is so complicated and challenging unless they are up for the task. There are a couple themes, and the participants responded to each theme. The first theme is terminology, and terminology can bewilder a lot of patients especially if they are not exposed to the terms often. They would not know what the term would mean. The next theme is usability and patient familiarity, and the issue is as the generation gets older. They may face difficulty to use technology due to the lack of their technology skills. Patient expectations are the concerns of outcomes if the electronic personal health record was set in the system. It also shows how the practice and doctor would communicate with the patient and what services would be required of the patient. There are other themes that focus on the navigation through the system, but there is a negative feedback that it could be time consuming to find the specific information. Finally, having access permits the patients to choose which doctors would have authorized access to their electronic health records (Wagner, 2010). Some of the points above are relevant such as terminology. It is not easy for a person to hear, or read a word that is unfamiliar. Today, all of the terminologies can be found by Google. Perhaps, there can be some tool available on electronic health records to define what the term means. It is interesting that giving access to the patients to choose the providers, so the providers would gain access to their electronic health records. That can be a great option to have for the patients, but what if they are incapacitated in times of treatment. That can be a bad situation.
of misplacing that information, which creates unnecessary risks. The patients are the number one consumers in healthcare business field, because without the patients there would be no money coming in and without money there would not be a business. A patient comes in various shapes and forms as they may need to be treated, get vaccinated, or have a check up if they are required to have one or they are concerned with something. Of course, not every patient may have an opportunity to efficiently use electronic health records if they were given that option. In order to benefit from using electronic communication, the patients would need to have computer and internet access while they have the capacity to understand the computer and health literacy, and numeracy. It is also possible that the patients may need to be confident with their printed communications skills, faith in doctors or the healthcare organization. For a person who may be educationally, economically, or socially disadvantaged is less probable to utilize electronic tools. That creates an unequal distribution for these groups of population, and they would miss out the benefits. There are racial and education disparities in the use of portals. At Cleveland Clinic, the account was more likely to be used by whites compared to blacks. If electronic portals become functional and available for the whole population, there is a potential of disproportionate access to portal accounts. The disparities from this should be at least minimized ensuring the population all has equal access. Policies may be needed to make sure the patients are regular users to access the portal (Ancker, 2011). The inequality use of access is an important issue, and there needs to be policies to make sure that everyone has the ability to access the portal to obtain their health information. Understandably, this kind of effort to ensure everyone has the ability to access is a tough task but nonetheless it can be accomplished. These policies need to be implemented before the situation gets worse otherwise all of the time would be wasted. The conventional paper charts create a very rather limited way to capture, store, and to share medical information, which contributes to medical errors in medical care.
Accessing to medical records is limited by the cost, time, and the difficulty of copying and carrying bulky paper-based records. The patients are often hesitant to ask for their access to their paper records while they are hospitalized. The patients’ motives may be misunderstood by caregivers. Electronic health records were created to address these limitations. Personal health records are designed in a way for the patients to access, and handle their own medical information. Unfortunately, the complexity to import multimedia hospital data while configuring and maintaining the record system is important. There are barriers to adopt, which is why the complexity of electronic health records are significant. An electronic health record that is based on the web while patient accessible may be designed by a medical team and clinical electronic health record would be a subsection. The program would be open for the patients, and the patients are instructed to use the web-based record while they are hospitalized. The system also is designed to automatically record each log in by each patient or family. It records the date, time, and determined the number of views for every page. As a result, the patients obtained the system at each hour throughout the day and there was more access to their records while they were in …show more content…
the hospital compared to after discharge (Burke, 2010). The article shows a lot of valuable information about electronic health records, and the patients’ behavior with electronic health records. The fact that they checked their records often while being hospitalized more often compared to after discharge says a lot. It shows that patients routinely check their information using an electronic tool rather than asking for their paper-based records every time. A family member also logs in to stay informed of the situation. The patient may have different experiences when it comes to handling their personal health records whether it is electronic or paper-based.
Also, the experiences have been shown to affect the quality of healthcare by influencing patient satisfaction. It helps the business’s improvement and it creates better positive outcomes. After implementing electronic health records, the 70% of the patients expressed that they wanted to have e-mail communication with their doctors’ office, and they were satisfied with their experience utilizing electronic health records. The patients were more likely to recognize the benefits of electronic health records. The patients with internet access were concerned about privacy. However with older patients and patients with noticeable low levels of education or have chronic diseases were notably less probable to use the internet. This also creates an inconsistency. Practices should consistently document patient communication selections to accommodate communications and to refine patient experiences. Patients without internet access typically were less satisfied with their experiences. They expressed that they had longer wait times for appointments, and communication with their doctor’s office in a less timely fashion. The adoption of electronic health records will effectively increase the healthcare system through decreased unnecessary utilization of healthcare services (De Leon,
2012). It seems like a lot of patients are happy with electronic health records, and they are able to see the benefits from it. Unfortunately, for older patients and patients with low levels of education or have chronic diseases may not have the ability to access their information right away through technology. Teaching someone who is not adequate with using technological tools is no easy feat. It takes time, and energy to train someone, and it would be very helpful to have a user friendly interface. The disparities are commonly noticed in patient portal enrollment. There was a contrast from the use within the patient portal in terms of seeking an advice from the providers. It means there were no racial or ethnic disparities. Female patients and patients’ age that are 35 years and older tend to be more probable to look for the provider’s advice. They were also more likely to request medication refills. Some of the patients were provided access to an electronic patient portal by their physicians; around one third of the patients did not take up on the offer. Patients that are 65 years and older were more probable to look for the provider’s guidance and medication refills once they are enrolled in contrast to those younger than 35 years. There was no noticeable difference in enrollment by sex although females were more probable to ask for the provider’s guidance compared to males (Goel, 2011). The lack of gender difference of enrollment is very interesting, because women tend to go to the doctor or ask for advice every time they notice something wrong with their body. There was no disparity when it comes to asking for the doctor’s advice, and that says a lot because people want to make sure that they are healthy. That can be said the same for medication refills, because people needs to get their medication refilled as soon as possible. According to the survey, many users showed that the application, which is called My Chart, was easy to use. Their medical record information was thorough, accurate, and understandable. Only a few users were concerned about the confidentiality of their information or about seeing unusual test results after getting an explanatory electronic message from their provider. The patients said that they liked e-mail communication as some form of interaction while they also preferred in-person communication for others such as getting treatment instructions. The patients did not like telephone or written communication. This contradicts the physicians’ preference in form of communication. They prefer telephone communication over e-mail communication (Hassol, 2004). The difference between the patients and the physicians in terms of communication is very strange and unusual, because the quality of healthcare relies on a good relationship between them. E-mail is the easiest form of communication, and the message is automatically saved unless it is deleted. With telephone communication, there are a lot of barriers since someone else may answer the telephone or the doctor is not available at the time so they have to call at another time. That can be really frustrating sometime. Then again with e-mails, some people have the tendency to type out their message in a way that is brief with slang words. And, the lack of tone makes the communication easily misinterpreted. Electronic health record adoption rates differ depending on the type of practice of primary care provider. Uninsured, Black and Hispanic or Latino patients were less probable to have primary care providers that use electronic health records. This can be said the same for Hispanic or Latino Medicaid patients. If adoption of clinical health information technology is askew, the benefits of this new technology possibly could not be provided to the underserved. Federally qualified health centers are granted to serve poor and uninsured patients, the disparity of electronic health record adoption was 47% lower among federally qualified health centers serving a huge proportion of uninsured patients compared with federally qualified health centers serving lesser uninsured patients. There is little information about the diffusion of clinical health information technology through providers to the underserved, or about the impact of health information technology adoption on underserved patients in general (Hing, 2009). That little information needs to be investigated more to make sure the patients receive proper health care along with the access of electronic health record through the patient portal. Medicaid should be able to provide the physicians electronic health records. At least, there should be something available for these patients, because 47% is a big percentage considering it is almost half in larger uninsured patients. And, this is under federal qualified health centers too. The healthcare system is broken up in pieces due to clinicians’ failure to inform necessary health services due to an oversight, little time, and competing demands. The patients also may not be aware of the knowledge about healthcare services, abysmal desire to get services, or face logistical challenges. With the computer technology in the modern world, the paper-based systems converted into electronic formats. It allowed for websites and software products available for patients to input information through typing in their medical information. The patients are able to communicate with their clinicians through messaging services, so they can improve their health. However, the information and clinical terminology need to be modified into lay language. Clinical information without any interpretation or context does not notify the patients what they need to do to improve their health. A few of the personal health records are starting to supply simple interpretation. Personal health record shows a list to a patient based on age and gender of when they got the test and when it is demanded by the due date set up on rules designated by the practice. This is inefficient, because the patient has a complex personal history, which complicates things. This unreliability and issues need to be given to parties, the clinicians and the patients that let them to determine the best for them. Lastly, personal health records should assist to allow the patients and clinicians to take actions on suggestions. All of the information depends on the patient’s situations, which may include supplies that are educational, decisions aids, risk calculators, logistical with support, and prompts. All of these factors can be arranged into personal health records (Krist, 2011). The elimination factor could be really helpful in terms of specifying the possible diseases at a certain age and gender. That could help the patient to stay healthy, so they can avoid getting a disease. It could help reduce the mortality rate if a patient sees something concerning, they would go and visit the doctor right away. Of course the design is not perfect in terms of potential errors that could create panics for the wrong reasons. All of the other information could be added to make sure that the information fits to what’s right for the patient. It takes a lot of effort and work to design something like this. There is no doubt that universal electronic health records are the unavoidable technological advance in the computerized communications age. A network of nationally linked electronic health record systems is somewhat rare, but they are being developed throughout the world. These countries are Canada, Australia, the United States, and Britain. There are potential advantages of storing and sharing patient information electronically, because of improved legibility and effective access to medical records, quality would be improved and safety of medical services, lowering healthcare costs, improved population-level health and increased health research. Unfortunately, as long there are potential advantages, there are also potential risks, which must be reduced if electronic health records are to be publically accepted and universally implemented. This is no easy task due to ethical and political challenges by electronic health records. These issues are citizens’ rights over their ownership of their own medical data, terms of using personal or anonymous health records that can be utilized for medical treatment and research. Also, there are concerns regarding the security of electronic databases and the socio-political insinuations of a database for the surveillance society. Personal privacy and security are complicated and its complications may present barriers to public acceptance of storing and sharing personal health information (Luchenski, 2012). The concept of universal electronic health records sounds like it would be very helpful for people that often travel across countries. It can also help prevent diseases if possible from invading other countries. There always has been an issue about that especially over the past few years. Electronic health records may be difficult to implement in third world countries due to lack of money to invest something like this. As for political challenges, this is not easy for the countries to open up and share private sensitive information with other countries. This is incredibly not safe if some countries are willing to manipulate or cheat the system. There is a portal called Clinical Focus, and it is a search box allowing a combined search of selected online information tools. The survey was used to measure the usefulness and the impact by collecting feedback about users’ experience, and the survey intents on the type of clinicians using this tool. It assessed user satisfaction and recognized impact on patient care decision making. The survey results propose the many of the respondents found Clinical easy to navigate, the content was easy to read and the retrieved information is relevant and complete. Many of the respondents would recommend Clinical Focus to their colleagues. This tool shows a promising future development based on the results (Tannery, 2011). There is a lot of software that is being developed, and feedback is constantly needed from the surveys. It is positive that majority of respondents expressed good things about Clinical Focus. The idea of simplicity and easy to use is always popular with a lot of people. Not many people like to do something that is so complicated and challenging unless they are up for the task. There are a couple themes, and the participants responded to each theme. The first theme is terminology, and terminology can bewilder a lot of patients especially if they are not exposed to the terms often. They would not know what the term would mean. The next theme is usability and patient familiarity, and the issue is as the generation gets older. They may face difficulty to use technology due to the lack of their technology skills. Patient expectations are the concerns of outcomes if the electronic personal health record was set in the system. It also shows how the practice and doctor would communicate with the patient and what services would be required of the patient. There are other themes that focus on the navigation through the system, but there is a negative feedback that it could be time consuming to find the specific information. Finally, having access permits the patients to choose which doctors would have authorized access to their electronic health records (Wagner, 2010). Some of the points above are relevant such as terminology. It is not easy for a person to hear, or read a word that is unfamiliar. Today, all of the terminologies can be found by Google. Perhaps, there can be some tool available on electronic health records to define what the term means. It is interesting that giving access to the patients to choose the providers, so the providers would gain access to their electronic health records. That can be a great option to have for the patients, but what if they are incapacitated in times of treatment. That can be a bad situation.