Abstract
In the current age of electronic health records, it has become increasingly vital that medical practitioners utilize the technology to improve the quality of services provided to the patient population. One such intervention is making electronic health record systems interoperable. The proposed research will seek to establish the impact of interoperability of electronic health record systems on the quality or emergency services, reducing prescription errors, enhancing irretrievability of patient information, and wholesomely improving the efficacy of emergency medical attention. This study will adopt a qualitative approach. Questionnaires will be administered to 384 participants to achieve a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of 5. Participants for the study were randomly selected from the emergency medical services records availed by Bellevue Hospital Center. A Likert scale will be used to categorize the responses presented by the respondents. The expected result is that integrating interoperability in electronic health records will improve the promptness of emergency medical services personnel, reduce errors in drug administration, and reduce emergency-related fatalities.
Introduction
The prevalence of emergency services in the United States has necessitated the formulation of an effective electronic health record system to support the delivery of quality services to patients that are in dire need of emergency medical attention. According to Ortiz, Ramnarayan, and Kinsman (2017), there were 6.7 million crashes in the United States in 2014. The cases yielded 32,675 fatalities, a comprehensive cost of 2.3 836 billion dollars and about 2.3 million injured individuals. The presence of an elaborate and informative electronic health record systems that provides paramedics with vital information that they need would have played a pivotal role in reducing the fatalities.
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The usage of electronic health information technology in the United States context has dramatically increased since the passing to The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Notably, by the start of 2011, the number of physicians using electronic health record systems had reached 57%. Making EHR systems interoperable improves the ability of health care service providers to other relevant stakeholders to share vital information within and between health care facilities to guarantee holistic patient care. Zhou et al. (2013) argue that interoperability is a critical component that improves the usefulness of EHR systems in improving the quality of health care services provided to patients. Ultimately, this proposal seeks to demystify that interoperability of EHR systems contributes to the improvement of the quality of emergency medical services.
Conclusion
Empirical studies conducted conducted by Zhou et al. (2013) among other researches discussed in this papers elucidate that adopting electronic health record systems in the medical setup is not enough. It has become increasingly paramount that the interoperability of electronic health record systems is utilized as a tool of ensuring that vital information is availed to paramedic in a bid to improve the quality of emergency medical services. The proposed study will use a qualitative approach. Principally, 385 participants will be choose to achieve a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of 5. The administration of questionnaires will allow me to gather first-hand information from medical practitioners that work at the emergency medical services segment. Based on insight gathered from secondary sources explored in this research proposal, the expected results for this study would demonstrate a positive correlation between the quality of emergency medical services and interoperability of the electronic health record system. To be precise, integrating interoperability in electronic health records will improve the promptness of emergency medical services personnel, reduce errors in drug administration, and reduce emergency-related fatalities. Ultimately, the findings of the study will sensitize the need to adopt interoperability in electronic health records and the necessarily employee training should be conducted as a means of improving the efficacy of emergency medical services.
References
Blobel, B. (2018). Interoperable EHR Systems–Challenges, Standards and Solutions. EJBI , 14 (2), 10-19.
Ortiz, N., Ramnarayan, M., & Kinsman, J. (2017). Epidemiology of EMS Responses to Traffic Crashes in the United States for 2014. Journal of Transport & Health , 5 , S84.
Zhou, Y., Ancker, J. S., Upahdye, M., McGeorge, N. M., Guarrera, T. K., Hedge, S., ... & Lin, L. (2014). The impact of interoperability of electronic health records on ambulatory physician practices: a discrete-event simulation study. Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics , 21 (1), 21-29.
