Question

Describes four broad categories of barriers to health information technology. Conduct a search of the literature to support your answers to the following:

Which category is the greatest barrier and why?

What other barriers do you see?

What strategies are being employed to overcome these barriers?

Answer 1

Ans) There are four broad categories of barriers to EHRs, CPOE, e-mar, telemedicine, and many otherclinical applications.

These barriers are:

(1) financial,

(2) organizational/behavioral,

(3) technical,

(4) privacy/security.

- Of these four barriers, I believe that financial barriers are the greatest. “EHRs have the potential to improve quality of care, reduce medical errors, and lower administrative costs, incorporating them into clinical practice will require large investments in technology.

- It is evident that health information technology will lower costs and save funds in the long run. I believe financial barriers are the greatest because it is difficult to come up with the amount of funds it would take to allow for widespread adoption and use of health information technology, such as EHRs.

- I believe a major barrier to health information technology that has been overlooked is patient behavioral barriers. Our aging patient population is not too tech savvy. If our patients are unableand/or unwilling to use health information technology, such as communicating with their providers online or ordering refills online, the systems will not work as efficiently as they’re meant to. A personal example of this situation is my previous occupations “mandatory call-in refill system”. This system was set up to reduce phone calls, interruptions, and patient waiting times.

- Furthermore, the system kept new prescriptions and refills prescriptions separated in our pharmaceutical automated machines, in order, and provided patients with a pick up date and time. Many patients did not like to call their refills in for many reasons. When patients refused to use our system, we had multi-hour waiting times, crowded lobbies, many errors, overwhelmed.