Question

Case Study: A 65-year-old woman was just been diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She was informed of this diagnosis in her primary care physician's office. She leaves her physician's office and goes home to review all of her tests and lab results with her family. She goes home and logs into her PHR. She is only able to pull up a portion of her test results. She calls her physician's office with concern. The office staff discussed that she had gone to receive part of her lab work at a lab not connected to the organization, part was completed at the emergency room, and part was completed in the lab that is part of the doctor's office organization.

The above scenario might be a scenario that you have commonly worked with in clinical practice. For many reasons, patients often receive healthcare from multiple organizations that might have different systems.

As you review this scenario, reflect and answer these questions for this discussion.

• What are the pros and cons of the situation in the case study?
• What safeguards are included in patient portals and PHRs to help patients and healthcare professionals ensure safety?
• Do you agree or disagree with this process?
• What are challenges for patients that do not have access to all of the EHRs? Remember, only portions of the EHRs are typically included in the PHRs.

Answer 1

1. The pros of this are :-

- easily accessible if the physician office is rushed up by patient's

- timely gives the report when the patient haven't reached in the hospital investigation hours

- can be used in emergency situations

The cons of this situation are:-

- patient is doing the investigation outside the hospital premises which is not allowed if patient is in any trial or study

- costly

- not accurate results

- some labs takes more time than hospital hours.

- data related to the patient is being given outside the hospital

2. Safeguards included are :-

- individual login ID is provided to the staff and patients which provides accessibility of data only to patient or the treating physician.

- some of the softwares have biometric recognization to access the data

All these ensure safety of the data related to the patient.

3.I agree with this process because this is the systematic way how work is done at clinicals .This is the scenario which I have seen in the clinicals in my working experience .

4. The challenges faced by patient when they don't have access to EHR are :-

- not aware of the treatment status

- not aware of the reports

- decline to patients right

- patient can get referred to other institutions because they don't have reports

- does not know how much claim should they take from insurance company.