Meaningful use of Nurses Paper

Introduction and Overview 

Protecting electronic health information and maintaining an up-to-date list of diagnoses are the two core objectives that enable EHRs to support healthcare in stage one. Records patients note electronically and record family history data are the two menu objectives that provide flexibility for providers in stage two. Meaningful use program is an initiative that focuses on transforming healthcare facilities to use electronic health records in exchanging information between the health care providers and the patients (Registered Nursing, 2020). The origin of meaningful use can be traced back in 2009, where there was an enactment of the act for American Reinvestment and Recovery (ARRA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH). Meaningful is needed because it improves the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery in the health care sector by reducing disparities. EMR, EHR, and ePHR are all related to the clinical information system in that they all keep the patient's information and make the retrieval to be fast, reliable, and easy. Meaningful use is significant to the nursing profession, especially the primary care providers, as it improves service delivery and increases patient outcomes. 

Discussion and Analysis 

There are five main goals and objectives of meaningful use. One of the goals is to improve the quality and efficiency of service delivery to reduce health disparities. Health disparities include medical errors and meaningful reduce the errors as its electronic. Secondly, involve the patients and parents in their health. Meaningful use appreciates the contribution of parents and family members to the recovery of the patient. The third goal is to improve care coordination. With meaningful use, it easy to share information, and communication is enhanced. Fourthly, improve the health of the general public and, lastly, ensure there are privacy and protection of health information (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). The general implication of meaningful use to the nurses, nursing, national health policy, patients' outcomes, and population health is an increase in competency level among the care providers and effective use of resources. I deal with the goals in my workplace when retrieving patient's information to start their treatment. 

The program is effective as it improves service delivery. The program is cost-effective as it saves on labor. There is a reduction in the number of people who have to handle a patient's health records as they can be directly sent from the nurse to the doctor. The program works as it has a high adaptability rate. Many hospitals are venturing into using EHR in improving their service delivery. The retrieval of patient's records is accurate and timely, implying the program improves quality and efficiency in care (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). The main strength of meaningful health records is the ability to ease a patient's data storage. However, the program is disadvantageous as it has a high maintenance cost and requires personnel training. 

Core Requirements 

The core requirements for meaningful use are beneficial to the advanced nurse as they give them skills and knowledge in EHR technology. In nursing, the core requirements are vital as they show the validity and competency of the operations. The core requirements are good in monitoring population health as there is an increase in people seeking quality health care. In setting national health policy and improving patients' outcomes the requirements are key in making informed decisions. MUP has a positive impact on patients' reminders, prescribing, and electronic access. With meaningful use, patients are reminded when its time to take their medication, the appropriate prescription, and access to their health record is very easy. The MUP assist the providers in making an informed decision as it provides them with patient's information and history for comparability and even seeks assistance from other providers. Thus, it is effective in delivering better care. For nursing, medical errors such as duplication, testing, and elimination of adverse drug reactions are prevented using MUP. The system is designed so that it does not allow double entry and can detect any errors. There is the ease of sharing information such as that of immunization among the various health care agencies. 

Challenges and Recommendations 

The main current challenge of the MUP is financial issues that are incurred in the implementation and maintenance. The implementation cost of MUP involves purchasing installing both the hardware and software systems (Menachemi and Collum, 2011). Studies show that the cost is both for the inpatients and the outpatients. To overcome the challenge of cost, the healthcare facility will have to maximize the program both in the short and long – term. They need to train their nurses on how to operate the system to rip the most out of it once the implementation stage is done and the system is up and running. 

Conclusion 

Meaningful use is a program that aims at modernizing the healthcare system through the use of technology to keep and share a patient's data. The system aims to improve the facility's level of operations through the ease of retrieval of patients' records and increase communication between the providers. The program is effective in-service delivery to the patients, general population, nurses and nursing. The main challenge of the program is cost of installation and implementation. A healthcare facility can deal with the issue through training of their healthcare workers for utilization purposes. Based on the above analysis, MUP should be the healthcare transformation strategy and it will easily assist them in reaching their goal of service delivery and improved patients' outcome. 

References 

Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Public Health and Promoting Interoperability Programs. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/ehrmeaningfuluse/introduction.html. Accessed 18 September 2020. 

Menachemi, N. & Collum, T. (2011). Benefits and Drawbacks of Electronic Health Record System. Risk Management and Healthcare Policy, 4(1): 47-55. 

Registered Nursing. (2020). What is Meaningful use? Retrieved from https://www.registerednursing.org/meaningful-use/. Accessed 18 September 2020.