Telemedicine a Technological Based Modality

This paper will discuss the strategies and the application framework of knowledge management in healthcare units with special emphasis on hospitals. Discussion In healthcare enterprises, knowledge management has both challenging as well as intriguing issues. Such issues come from the distributed and heterogeneous healthcare domain. Also, the security and ethical concerns further make it difficult to access information. Another distinguishing feature of knowledge management in healthcare uses is that th... ... middle of paper ... ... of Knowledge Management, 10(2), 110 – 120.

The delivery of healthcare mandates a lot of difficult decision making for healthcare providers as well as patients. For patients, much of the responsibility is left to them especially when serious health problems occur. This responsibility deals with what treatments could be accepted, what treatments could be continued, and what treatments could be stopped. Overall, it considers what route should be taken in regards to the health interests of the patient. However, there are circumstances in which patients cannot decide for themselves or communicate what they want in terms of their healthcare.

Policy Issues in Telehealth The purpose of telemedicine is to remove distance as a barrier to health care. While telehealth is an accepted resource to bridge the gap between local and global health care, integrating telehealth into existing health infrastructures presents a challenge for both governments and policy makers (HRSA, 2011). Today there are policy barriers that prevent the expansion of telehealth, including reimbursement issues raised by Medicare and private payers, state licensure, and liability and privacy concerns. Reimbursement Issues Reimbursement policies prevent the total integration of telemedicine into health care practice (Prinz, 2008). Today, there is no overall telemedicine reimbursement policy in the federal health care system (HRSA, 2011 & OAT, 2003).

The national CLAS Standards provide the blueprint to implement such appropriate services to improve health care in the United States. The standards cover many areas, such as leadership, workforce, governance; communication and language assistance; organizational engagement, continuous improvement, and accountability. (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2014). There is a lack of conceptual clarity with cultural competence in the field and the research community. Cultural competence is seen as encompassing only racial and ethnic differences, and omitting other population groups who are ethnically and racially similar to providers, but are stigmatized or discriminated against, who are different in other identities, and have some differences in their health care needs that have resulted in health disparities.

An EHR, as explained by HealthIT.gov (n.d.), is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. It includes, but is not limited to, medical history, diagnoses, medications, and treatment plans. The EHR, then, serves as a resource that aids clinicians in decision-making by providing comprehensive patient information. Though the benefits of IT are numerous, successful adoption into healthcare has been difficult. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (2004) states, “barriers include the cost and complexity of IT implementation, which necessitates significant work process and cultural changes” (p. 158).

Annotated Bibliography on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Introduction As the evolution of healthcare from paper documentation to electronic documentation and ordering, the security of patient information is becoming more difficult to maintain. Electronic healthcare records (EHR), telenursing, Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE) are a major part of the future of medicine. Social media also plays a role in the security of patient formation. Compromising data in the information age is as easy as pressing a send button. New technology presents new challenges to maintaining patient privacy.

As a result, health care networks are consolidating a fragmented system and standardizing the flow of medical information. Challenges Impeding Health Care Information Networks The development of information network systems ties healthcare care organizations allowing them to disseminate patient information. However, there have been several key challenges in development, implementation and adoption. Some of the challenges organizations encounter is the lack of standardization between health care entities, patient restrictions in health information and access (Tan & Payton, 2010). Another challenge organizations would face is the initial costs and justifying expenditures on a health management information system (HMIS) (Tan & Payton, 2010).

Laboratory medicine is perhaps even more poorly studied than many other areas, such as the defining what primary care and hospital services are. Given this lack of specific information about laboratory communication services, this paper will help identify the financial structure of our healthcare system, particularly as it relates to health disparities, the uninsured, and functional communication challenges that America has been faced with, analyze the key components of a communication system, including the basic concepts of a communication channel, service, device and interaction mode. The review will then try and summarize some of what is known about specific communication problems that arise across health services in the main, including the community and hospital service delivery, and how it will we be able to improve the quality of care. Health care is a very important issue in our everyday society. Over the past few years there have been several opinion... ... middle of paper ... ...sparities are mostly felt and experienced by the minority groups as their characteristics are different from the majority of the US population.

Without considering the human element, the implementation of health information technology in the healthcare system will fail. Health information technology (HIT), a tool to arrive at the best use of information. Informatics, the big picture, helps people using information to do cognitive tasks better with technology. (Hersh, 2009) Currently, implementation projects as a matter of routine will focus mainly on the technology. This review will examine two articles one from the United States, the other from the United Kingdom describing different approaches to considering the human element.

According to the National Alliance for Health Information Technology (2008) and the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) (2012), the personal health record (PHR) is defined as the individual lifelong electronic health records. Its features are electronic, readily available, personal control, standardization, resource sharing, and portability. Although the PCEHR is currently being implemented in several countries of the world, it still has many controversial disadvantages. Hoy, Yoshihashi, & Bailey, 2012) mention that some of the ideal functions of PHR, include patient controlled, longitudinal record, interoperable and resource sharing, portability, automated input of clinical reports, as well as the integration of clinician workflow. "The PCEHR is aimed to be a secure electronic summary of people's medical history stored and shared in a network of connected systems from a central electronic hub (Australian Nursing Journal, Aug. 2012; Kerai, Wood, &Martin, March 2014)”.