Question

What would happen if all health care organizations were required to adopt an electronic health record system? How would this affect efficiency, privacy, data storage, ease of record access, and cost?

Answer 1

Electronic Health Records implementation, benefits and problem solving methods:

Adoption of an Electronic Health Record System can provide better quality of health care with marginal error and least cost because process is transformed through technology and it can provide better solution to the problem. Quality can be checked properly and necessary correction can be taken if any.

Medical error can be minimized because technology can helps in minimizing it through adoption of better procedures and process. It enhanced communication among departments and multiple providers can quickly access data of the patients so error will be minimized.

Technology that is used is telehealth option, tablet, digital imaging device, electronic libraries etc. Application that is use is Electronic Medical record.

Electronic Health Record Benefits:

1. Patient Care was improved

2. EHR can be updated in real time

3. Patient Participation was improved

4. EHR can be delivered to the concern authorities immediately.

5. Improved Care Coordination

6. Diagnostics & Patient Outcomes was improved

7. Practice Efficiencies and Cost Savings was improved

Electronic Health Record Challenges:

1. Difficulty in adding older records to an EHR system. Old paper medical records of a patients’ needs to be record in new EHR system and one of the way is to scan those documents and add to system. 22 to 25% doctors are not satisfied from this as this is long time consuming activity.

2. Synchronization of Records: When care is provided at two different location, it is difficult to maintain records at two places.

3. Privacy: Today records are exchanged on internet as other data have. Online security of these data from hacking with entire system.

4. Hardware limitations: Computer access is required to use electronic heath record. This required sufficient number of laptops, desktops or other mobile computers to the employees.

5. Long term preservation and storage of records: Records needs to be store for long time and it needs storage on server and other hardware equipment like hard disks.

6. Inertia: Many large institutions resist change as it cost to them and affect their business operations. The institutional stress of implementing new large system must be anticipated by management.

7. Training: To work with new EHR, it requires a simple training to the users who are new to this technology, such as data entry, internet uses and software working.

Solutions for Electronic Health Record implementation:

1. Support team based care: Current technology require data to enter in software, which is carried out by other team members so that doctors do their work more efficiently.

2. Promote care coordination through automatic track referrals, consultants, orders and labs so that doctors can easily follow patient progression.

3. Facilitate digital patient engagement. These increase interoperability between EHR systems and patients mobile technologies.

Reference:

D.W. Bates et al., “A Proposal for Electronic Medical Records in U.S. Primary Care,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 10 , no. 1 ( 2003 ): 1 –10.

E.H. ShortliffeThe evolution of electronic medical records Acad Med, 74 (1999), pp. 414-419.

J.S. Wald, D.W. Bates, B. MiddletonA patient-controlled journal for an Electronic Medical Record: issues and challenges Medinfo (2004) (2004), pp. 1166-1172.

R. Miller and I. Sim, “Physicians’ Use of Electronic Medical Records: Barriers and Solutions,” Health Affairs 23 , no. 2 ( 2004 ): 116 –126.

S.J. Wang et al., “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Electronic Medical Records in Primary Care,” American Journal of Medicine 114 , no. 5 ( 2003 ): 397 –403.