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The effects of electronic health records
The effects of electronic health records
The effects of electronic health records
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Clinical documentation has been used throughout healthcare to analyze care provided to a patient, communicate important information between healthcare providers and patients, and provide medical records that will help patients track their conditions. The Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have revolutionized the process of clinical documentation through direct care to the patient. This electronic health record is a new technology that helps maintain patient’s privacy. Both computers and EHRs can facilitate and improve the clinical documentation methods, which is beneficial for all patients, the care teams, and health care organizations. In this case, documentation improvement has a direct impact on patients by providing quality information. However, the new technological change can also address the health care system efficiencies that result from paper-based charting. Obviously, the implementation of electronic clinical …show more content…
In the healthcare environment, clinical documentation is the collection of information that refers to patient’s electronic health or medical record. There are many advantages of using informational health records, “health care environment is experiencing an explosion of knowledge that requires standardization to collect, store, achieve, retrieve, process, analyze, and exchange vast amounts of health data [1], (pg. 252).” In addition, the clinical documentation is important to collect medication orders, care plans, consults, laboratory data, and client outcomes. These records are used to facilitate structured communication between nurses and other health professionals to improve the delivery of quality care. Thus, clear communications throughout the healthcare organization is very important to the well-being of the customers and professionals that provide
This is a critical review of the article entitled “Selecting a Standardized Terminology for the Electronic Health Record that Reveals the Impact of Nursing on Patient Care”. In this article, Lundberg, C.B. et al. review the different standardized terminology in electronic health records (EHR) used by nurses to share medical information to the rest of the care team. It aims at showing that due to the importance of nursing in patient care, there is a great need for a means to represent information in a way that all the members of the multidisciplinary medical team can accurately understand. This standardization varies from organization to organization as the terminologies change with respect to their specialized needs.
For years now, the healthcare system in the United States have managed patient’s health records through paper charting, this has since changed for the better with the introduction of an electronic medical record (EMR) system. This type of system has helped healthcare providers, hospitals and other ambulatory institutions extract data from a patient’s chart to help expedite clinical diagnosis and providing necessary care. Although this form of technology shows great promise, studies have shown that this system is just a foundation to the next evolution of health technology. The transformation of EMR to electronic heath record system (EHR) is the ultimate goal of the federal government.
Historically, physicians and nurses documented patients’ health information using paper and pencil. This documentation created numerous errors in patients’ medical records. Patient information became lost or destroyed, medication errors occur daily because of illegible handwriting, and patients had to wait long periods to have access to their medical records. Since then technology has changed the way nurses and health care providers care for their patients. Documentation of patient care has moved to an electronic heath care system in which facilities around the world implement electronic health care systems. Electronic health records (EHR) is defined as a longitudinal electronic record of
The task of documentation is vital to nursing practice. Many times, however, this documentation is repeated in different areas of a patient’s chart. DiPietro et al. (2008) reported that 40% of the written documentation done by nurses was on personal paper at the patient’s bedside. This had to be copied into the formal patient record at a later time, resulting in double documentation. The reason nurses are forced to use this method of documentation instead of transcribing assessments directly into the chart is that this vital record of the patient’s information is often not readily available. Because several disciplines of the healthcare team require the chart throughout the day, there is no guarantee as to when the nurse may actually have access to it. Additionally, in almost all hospitals that utilize paper charting, the chart must travel with the patient when he or she leaves the floor for testing or procedures. This creates another roadblock to all members of the healthcare tea...
The case study by Elizabeth Layman (2011) is a very comprehensive compilation of the implementation of electronic health records, in relation to the Health Information Services Departments. Through this study Layman documents the conditions to be implemented to achieve satisfactory application of the change-over from the conventional pen and ledger system to computer documentation of patient’s records maintained by health networks.
Healthcare professionals associated with medical billing and coding know the progress the technology has made so far. In the last few decades, medical billing and coding has switched from being a paper-based system to a computerized format. Under HIPAA laws, medical practitioners had to develop new software in order to send out electronic bills. With the advent of electronic medical records (EMR), with one touch of a button, doctors, Nurse Practitioners and PAs can gain access to all the care a patient has ever received from every healthcare facility the patients visited previously and can figure out possible illnesses. This enables statistical documentation of the population as a whole as well. EMR can also make the healthcare system more transparent and allow integration with reimbursement data. As the healthcare system changes, this will prevent unnecessary costs and make it easier to get the reimbursements needed to treat a patient.
this will cause healthcare providers with the training and education needed for clinical documentation improvements to be installed effectively. It is important that having a specialized team who can create solutions towards Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) in order to minimize the failures that may occur. In this case, investing in training for the materials/tools necessary for healthcare providers to excel in their work with CDI. Essentially, Clinical Documentation is used throughout the healthcare system for the analysis of care, communication, and medical records. This is important because the information of medical records that healthcare providers are able to access, will help patients track their health conditions. Thus, clinical documentation improvement has a direct impact on patients by providing quality information. On the other hand, the new technological advancements will also be able to address the efficiencies in health care system that differ from paper-based charting. Improving on the quality of information will also have the effect upon the ethical and effectiveness of care that is being provided. This has a significant impact in order to maintain patient care that ensures the documentation is accurate, timely, and reflect within the services provided. Documentation assessments can be utilized so there can be improvements on the education for healthcare providers as they intend implementation standards take effect immediately. In this case, failures must be analyzed so that they will have the ability to comprehend and determine an organization’s strengths and weaknesses
The authors consist of nurses, specifically: a Chief Nursing Officer, a Nursing Informatics Officer, and a Dean/Professor of Nursing at Belmont University. The article described how vital nursing documentation is to achieve optimal patient care, including improving patient outcomes & collaborating with other healthcare providers. Using Henderson’s 14 fundamental needs as a framework for their research, the authors proved a definition of basic nursing care and incorporated it into an electronic health record. The authors utilized a team of 16 direct care nurses who were knowledgeable with documenting ele...
Miller, R., & Sim, I. (2004). Use of electronic medical records: Barriers and solutions. Retrieved June 29, 2011, from http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/23/2/116.short
Electronic medical records not only effect health care professionals, but the patients of those health care providers as well. However, nurses spend the most time directly using electronic medical records to access patient date and chart. Nurses now learn to chart, record data, and interact with other health care providers electronically. Many assume that electronic means efficient, and the stories of many nurses both agree, and disagree. Myra Davis-Alston, a nurse from Las Vegas, NV, says that she “[likes] the immediate access to patient progress notes from all care providers, and the ability to review cumulative lab values and radiology reports” (Eisenberg, 2010, p. 9). This form of record keeping provides health care professionals with convenient access to patient notes, vital signs, and test results from multiple providers comprised into one central location. They also have the ability to make patients more involved in their own care (Ross, 2009). With the advancement in efficiency, also comes the reduction of costs by not printing countless paper records, and in turn, lowers health care
Our clinical knowledge is expanding. The researcher has first proposed the concept of electronic health record (EHR) to gather and analyze every clinical outcome. By late 1990s computer-based patient record (CPR) replaced with the term EHR (Wager et al., 2009). The process of implementing EHR occurs over a number of years. An electronic record of health-related information on individual conforms interoperability standards can create, manage and consult with the authorized health professionals (Wager et al., 2009). This information technology system electronically gather and store patient data, and supply that information as needed to the healthcare professionals, as well as a caregiver can also access, edit or input new information; this system function as a decision support tools to the health professionals. Every healthcare organization is increasingly aware of the importance of adopting EHR to improve the patient satisfaction, safety, and lowering the medical costs.
Over the past decade, technological advances have paved the way for nurses to provide, quality, safe, standardized and individualized patient care (Saba & McCormick, 2015). The use of the Electronic Health Records (EHR) to manage patient data is quickly becoming widespread in the healthcare industry. The emerging use of the Electronic Health Record, is transforming how nurses care for patients. By creating and implementing an electronic, comprehensive, standardized method of recording patient data, nurses can facilitate and coordinate patient care with members of the multidisciplinary healthcare team. The use of the Electronic Health Record will promote positive
Ragavan, V. (2012, August 27). Medical Records Pals Malaysia : 17 Posibble Reasons How Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Might Support Day-to-Day Patient Care. Retrieved from Medical Records Pals Malaysia: http://mrpalsmy.wordpress.com/category/emr/
Data and information are integrated into each step of the nursing process: assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. ("Nursing Excellence." Nursing Informatics 101. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.) Following this process, nursing informatics personnel can organize and set each file and record accordingly based on the care process. Since health care providers communicate primarily through the notes they write in a patient’s chart, nurse informaticists seek to continually improve the speed, timeliness and accuracy of patient charting. Working with the accurate information is key to nurses in all fields of the spectrum. It is beneficial to the health care providers that information is precise and up-to-date so the care will be more than sufficient. When health workers have access to more up-to-date, complete patient notes, they can make better decisions about a patient’s care and use the appropriate resources to better help the quality of the patient’s care doctors can
The principles of documentation is clear, confidential, accurate, complete and concise, objective, organized and timely. Using documentation nurses are required to legally and ethically keep all information in the patient record confidential. There is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, which helps gives patients a greater control over their health care record (). Precise measurements and times must be used as much as possible. Accuracy can be enhanced through point of care documentation (Craven, 2017). The accuracy of documentation can be view from three perspectives veridical reflection of nursing, comprehensive while through detail of a patient journey and finally clarity in usage terms (Britain Summer of Nursing). The accuracy part is the really vital part in documentation within nursing because it shows the complete reflection of the stages of care that was provided by the health care professionals to an individual. Next, when an individual is documenting it needs to be complete and concise and organized. Having the report done as so allows for any health professional to find any information quick as possible without having to search throughout the entire chart for answers. When reporting it needs to be in a chronical flow order of the information about the patient care and procedures being done, within the chronological