Meaningful use of data from electronic health records (EHRs) can be used to improve healthcare by refining healthcare services, reducing the practice costs, and increasing the productivity of healthcare services providers. According to Chin & Sakuda (2012), EHRs are crucial in reducing medical errors that account for the deaths of 98,000 Americans. EHRs are part of Health Information Systems (HIS) that enhance effective communication in healthcare services delivery. For this reason, EHRs can significantly reduce the medical errors in which 80% are due to miscommunication (Chin & Sakuda, 2012). There is a connection between the data collected through EHRs and patient care since the systems enable accuracy and effectiveness in the management and use of patient data and information. It is through this accuracy that healthcare services providers reduce medical errors.
From my nursing experiences, I have seen EHRs improving patient care through the provision of correct and detailed patient health records that are used to make accurate diagnosis. Effective diagnosis facilitates better patient outcomes since healthcare services providers have ample information to determine the best procedures needed to treat a patient. EHRs are used to keep the medical history of the patient which makes it easier to determine the patient’s improvement. Moreover, the EHRs enable the physicians and nurses to retrieve the patient’s health records easily and quickly hence ensuring that the best intervention measures are taken in time. EHRs are also accessible from different departments of the healthcare services delivery facility something that improves convenience. However, EHRs can lead to recurrent medical errors if wrong patient data is captured into the systems. In that regard, it is up to practitioners to ensure accuracy where human input is needed ( Medina, 2015) . Additionally, continuous assessment of the systems is recommended to ensure that the information stored in EHRs is correct and that the systems do not have flaws.
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References
Chin, B. J., & Sakuda, C. M. (January 01, 2012). Transforming and improving health care through meaningful use of health information technology. Hawai'i Journal of Medicine & Public Health: a Journal of Asia Pacific Medicine & Public Health, 71, 50-55.
Medina, C. (2015). Electronic health records: Assessments of program participation and key challenges . New York: Nova Science Publishers.
