The healthcare sector just like any other sector is aware of the fact that the decision-making process must be backed by technology. The healthcare actors can no longer rely on pen and paper to come up and enforce their decision but must consider the opportunities presented by technological advancement. The modern healthcare systems are adopting technological solutions, which help the actors to record, retrieve, and disseminate patients, physicians, and policymakers information in real time. One such technological application that has been adopted in the healthcare setting is the Electronic Health Records (EHRs). This information system application enables the key healthcare actors including the nurses to capture, store, retrieve, and disseminate the patients’ health-related information whenever the need arises. The adoption and usage of this application have proved to be effective as it cuts back on time used to retrieve crucial patients’ healthcare information. The healthcare actors must, however, come up with efficient EHRs which when implemented will enhance the patients’ confidentiality and safety when it comes to disseminating patients’ health information.
The use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in Healthcare to Facilitate Decision-making
Electronic Health Records EHRs play a significant role in the healthcare decision-making process considering that it captures patient health information. In essence, this technological application captures patients’ information regarding demographics, medical progress notes, vital signs, radiology reports and laboratory information. Each time a patient interacts with the healthcare system, the patients’ data is collected and stored in an electronic form. From here, the healthcare actors can act on this information to make healthcare decisions. For example, the healthcare actors may realize that a certain category of its population let us say the rural women are reporting more respiratory diseases. Following this information, healthcare professionals can come up with solutions to deal with the increased respiratory diseases among this specific population. Furthermore, the use of EHRs helps concerned healthcare players to come up with policies about financing healthcare services and products. In essence, the EHRs show which diseases and departments require more funding going by the number of patients per department. Of importance is the fact that EHRs help reduces medical errors considering that a physician knows beforehand what the patient medical needs are thus enhancing the physicians’ decision-making capacity.
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Impact of EHRs on the Quality of Decision-making
EHRs play a central role in the decision-making process across varied healthcare institutions. In essence, the EHRs contain crucial patients’ information, which then guides the healthcare actors on what decisions to make. The reason why the EHRs are such a vital decision-making tool is the fact that they contain several key healthcare elements. As it is, Electronic Health Records usually combine data from the laboratory, pharmacy, radiology, physician orders, nursing plans, as well as medication records (Swati et al., 2016). One of the key elements is the administrative element, which contains all the patients’ name, next of kin, medical complaints, registration, admissions, transfers, and discharges across an array of healthcare institutions. The administrative elements then help the healthcare players to make efficient healthcare decisions by avoiding mix-ups as the EHRs help in proper patient identification (Benal et al., 2018). The laboratory element captures the patients’ laboratory schedules, orders, billings, and other vital information. This information helps the physicians to decide on the healthcare solutions the particular patient needs to enhance the quality of care. The radiology element of the EHRs encompasses all of the patients’ radiology information including radiology interpretations, results, and patient identification pin and radiology orders among other crucial information. This information, in turn, helps the healthcare players to decide on the line of action. The pharmacy element as entrenched in the EHRs includes all the prescriptions that have been given to a particular patient. From this information, a healthcare provider can reach into a decision as to whether the medications have been efficient or not and thus prescribe alternative medications.
The Process for Selecting and Implementing the Application
Healthcare actors must come together to design, implement and monitor the Electronic Health Records to ensure that they are efficient and that the EHRs help in improving healthcare delivery. The process of selecting and implementing EHRs starts with need assessment to determine if they are necessary or not depending on the size of the healthcare institution. Once the team concludes that EHRs are needed, then the team gets a consultant who is tasked with the responsibility of designing EHRs that match with the healthcare needs (Bush, Pérez, Baum, Etland and Connelly, 2018). However, the team must first give its opinions to ensure that the EHRs are reflective of the stakeholders’ needs. Once, the designing phase is complete, the team implements the EHRs in a small scale say in one to determine whether it meets the set objectives. If the EHRs meet the set objectives, then it can be adopted by the entire healthcare system. In case the EHRs fail to meet the set objectives, it is taken back to the designing phase to rectify any administrative issues Bush, Pérez, Baum, Etland and Connelly, 2018). From here, the concerned team monitors the working of the system through surveys and other information gathering tools. Finally, the concerned team makes progress reviews and recommendations for future upgrades so that the EHRs can be relevant in the long-term.
Costs associated with the Electronic Health Records
The process of selecting and implementing Electronic Health record is associated with several financial and social costs. According to Parabindala, Pamarthy, and Jonnalagadda (2016), most healthcare institutions are yet to take in the Electronic Health records owing to its associated high costs. For one, there is still an unresolved issue as to who is supposed to pay for the implementation of the EHRs. As a result, healthcare institutions are forced to pay for the EHRs from their own funds. As it is, implementing EHRs systems requires the healthcare payers to spend up to $162,000 in the first year and an additional $85,000 a year to maintain the HER systems (Parabindala, Pamarthy, and Jonnalagadda, 2016). In essence, these costs are for one hospital, which then means that implementing and maintaining Electronic Health Records is a costly affair especially if the federal government does not finance these systems. As at now, the federal government has already invested up to $25 billion towards EHR implementation across the US. Most of these funds are spent on securing the EHRs from the vendors as well as on training healthcare actors on the best practices to enhance the efficiency of the EHRs.
Nurses’ role(s) in Selecting and Evaluating the Electronic Health Records
Nurses play a central role in the selection and evaluation of EHRs since they are to be found in all of the medical departments. As it is, the transition to EHRs can be difficult for the physicians, as they do not interact a lot with the patients. However, the nurses can make the transition easier considering that they interact with patients all, the way from the registration, admission, consultation, prescription, treatment, transfers to the point of discharge. Moreover, nurses tend to have their hands on almost all of the healthcare aspects, which mean that they can offer invaluable insights on the intricacies of healthcare. Nurses are well versed with HIPAA standards, which then mean that they can provide meaningful input in the EHR development of security measure to ensure that the patient's health information is secure (Habibi-Koolaee, Safdari, and Bouraghi, 2015). Furthermore, the implementing team should allow the nurses to determine where the EHR should be installed considering that the nurses will be using it most of the time. Of importance, is the fact that nurses offer valuable feedback as to whether the EHR is working or not. This feedback will then help the management to assess the effectiveness of the EHRs, which will then enhance the quality, and efficiency of health care delivery.
References
Benal, J. L. et al. (2018). Impact of the implementation of electronic health records on the quality of discharge summaries and on the coding of hospitalization episodes. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 30 (8), 630–636.
Bush, R. A., Pérez, A., Baum. T., Etland, C., & Connelly, C. D. (2018). A systematic review of the use of the electronic health record for patient identification, communication, and clinical support in palliative care. JAMIA Open , 1 (2), 294–303.
Habibi-Koolaee, M., Safdari, R., & Bouraghi, H. (2015). Nurses readiness and electronic health records. Acta Informatica Medica , 23 (2), 105–107.
Parabindala, V., Pamarthy, A., and Jonnalagadda. N. R. (2016). Adoption of electronic health records and barriers. Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives, 6 (5).
Swati, Y. et al., (2016). Electronic Health Records and Quality of Care: An Observational Study Modeling Impact on Mortality, Readmissions, and Complications. Medicine 95 (19), e3332.
