Advantages and disadvantages of Electronic health records (EHR) systems
Electronic health records (EHR) systems
In the last one decade, every industry has adopted and invested heavily on technology, most especially computerization. Electronic health records (EHR) systems have become very common in hospitals as an effort to adopt the computerization trend. EHR is capable of transforming the health care system to an effective patient centred system. EHR can be defined as the longitudinal automated health registers of the data of the patients that is produced by the visits in any health care delivery setting (Alpert, 2016). Some of the elements that are included in this information include patient demographics, improvement records, treatment, past therapeutic account, vaccination, and laboratory records.
Benefits of EHR
Clinical outcomes greatly improve with EHR. The intention of health providers is always to ensure that there is patient safety, effectiveness and efficiency of health care. There is however, instances where patient encounters may not abide to the best health care practice guides. The causes for this can be as a result of clinicians not understanding the procedures, minimal time during patient appointment and clinicians not understanding that instructions relate to a specific patient. EHR greatly help to overcome all these issues, with computerized physician reminders help the physicians to remember the special are needed for each patient and this helps in reducing mix ups.
EHR helps in prevention of wasting health resources that include; provisions, apparatus, concepts and energy (Alpert, 2016). This also includes performance of redundant tests that central to incorrect positive outcomes that lead to increased expenses. Computerized reminders of previous tests such as blood tests help in reducing repetition of tests, which help improve quality of care (Alpert, 2016).
EHR greatly helps in reducing medication errors because the medication for every patient is properly recorded and reminders are set to help the nurses administer the correct medication at the correct time (Robinson, 2016). EHR also greatly aids to reduce billing inaccuracies and erroneous coding, and this helps to increase currency flow and improve profits. The EHR notices to both the workers and the patients about the tedious health appointments aid in increasing patient appointments and thus increase income (Robinson, 2016). Most of the avoided charges with EHR systems are as an end result of proficiencies, which are generated by having patient records automatically handy. Some of these comprise; amplified exploitation of tests, condensed staff assets devoted to patients administration, condensed charges of provisions that are essential to uphold paper records and reduced record charges.
EHR also helps to facilitate enhanced legitimate and supervisory passivity in regard to improved safekeeping of records and improved patient discretion over well-ordered and auditable worker right of entry. Ohno (2017), in their study illustrate that 6.1% health care facilities with EHR systems have an account of paid misconduct entitlements as equated to 10.8 of the physicians that do not have EHR systems. This decrease is as an outcome of augmented communication among the care providers, improved legibility and wholeness of patient accounts and improved devotion to medical guiding principles.
EHR systems also greatly help and improve the capacity to conduct studies. Having electronically kept patient data can clue to more measurable analyses to recognize evidence based best performances much more effortlessly (Vitari & Ologeanu, 2018).
Disadvantages of EHR
Financial issue is one of the drawbacks of EHR systems. The monetary concerns include; approval and execution charges, continuing upkeep charges, and loss of income that is related with provisional loss of output, and regressions in incomes (Khosrowpour, 2017). All these issues bring about a hindrance for health facilities and health care providers to accept and device EHR systems. Implementation and maintenance of an EHR system can be very costly adding up to about $14,000 per general practitioner in the first year of operation (Khosrowpour, 2017). The hardware and the software of an EHR system require be frequently replacing and upgrading and the providers also require to have on-going training to ensure that the system is effective.
Another drawback of EHR is the interruption of work flows for the staff and medical suppliers, which could clue to temporary losses in output (Vitari & Ologeanu, 2018). The loss of profits comes about from the end operators understanding how to operate this new system, which can possibly lead to losses in profits.
EHR systems also bring about the risks of violation of patient privacy. This is a major worry for patients since there is a cumulative amount of health data swapped by electronic means. This is an issue that many hospitals are trying to deal with by executing severe, no lenience punishments for staffs who access patient records inappropriately (Ohno, 2017).
EHR can also cause medical faults, adverse feelings and overreliance on technology. Systems that are not properly designed or lack of suitable end user training can central to augmented medical faults (Robinson, 2016). The end operators can also be faced with strong emotive reactions as they fight to familiarize themselves with the new technology and this can disturb the work flow.
Although there are many unintentional concerns of EHR systems, the benefits ensue to the patients and the society at large. Execution of EHR systems is essential in facilitating the transformation of the health care system for the better. EHR implementation is one of the many tactics that can help expand the attention on quality advancement and costs decrease.
References
Alpert JS. (2016). The electronic medical record in 2016: Advantages and disadvantages.
Digit Med [serial online] [cited 2019 Sep 26];2:48-51. Available from: http://www.digitmedicine.com/text.asp?2016/2/2/48/189504
Khosrowpour, M. (2017). Encyclopedia of information science and technology.
Ohno, L. (2017, February 13). Health information technology and patient safety. Journal of
the American Medical Informatics Association, Volume 24, Issue 2,
Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/24/2/243/2996335
Robinson, H. (2016, July). Benefits of using an electronic health record : Nursing2019.
Retrieved from https://journals.lww.com/nursing/Fulltext/2016/07000/Benefits_of_using_an_electronic_health_record.6.aspx
Vitari, C., & Ologeanu-Taddei2, R. (2018, March 21). The intention to use an electronic
health record and its antecedents among three different categories of clinical staff. Retrieved from https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-018-3022-0
