Electronic Medical RecordsEssay Preview: Electronic Medical RecordsReport this essayElectronic Medical Records (EMR)Edith Ellison GriffinUniversity of Phoenix Graduate Study ProgramHCS/587Electronic Medical Records (EMR)Nearly every industry, from banking to retailing, keeps their most sensitive and vital records electronically. So, if youre vacationing in London and want to know the balance in your California- based bank account, you simply check it at the next ATM machine you find.
However going to see a specialist right down the hall from your primary care physician office youll be handed a paper chart to carry with you, the irony of this is, the paper chart probably wont contain details of your visit to a different specialist for the same problem. So you better hope you can remember the pertinent details of that visit to relay to your new doctor.
Examine Need Purpose ChangeUnder the current system of care in the United States, when a person shows up at a clinic or hospital for treatment, it is most likely that the health care provider will have very little information about him or her and will have at best, only limited tools to track how other providers treated them in the past. According to the Institute of Medicine, as many as 98,000 patients die in U.S. hospitals each year due to preventable medical errors, such as receiving a wrong medication. The most common error found involved multiple physicians treating the same patient without having access to all the patients medical records. This system failure is connected to a lack of reliable health information (Leibel, 2012).
In contrast, Lewis (2009) indicates integrated EMR gives clinicians information they didnt have before. If someone was brought into the emergency department unconscious, its extremely helpful to know from the EMR that this same patient presented at his primary care practice 2 days earlier and received a head computed tomography (CT).
With EMR, the clinician can look for those results and not waste valuable time or resources getting another CT unless deem necessary to do so. Without EMR, the team wouldnt have known this patient had been seen in our system before (Leibel, 2009).
Examine Organizational and Individual BarriersDespite EMRs importance there are some challenges that must be considered when discussing the implementation process. Barriers to adoption include implementation cost, lack of standardization, and concerns about privacy, to name few. There are many vendors to choose from but programs do not come in “one size fits all” packets. Different computer software and hardware program products are not tailored to meet specific needs of all physicians. This type of customization requires the physicians input. Customization can have its disadvantage because the cost is higher and more time must be spent for the implementation team and the healthcare provider to understand the workflow needs (Lewis, 2009).
Individual barriers to change may result from lack of knowledge of information technology and its applications. For instance, older employees that may not be technologically savvy and trained in current application of information technology tools and relevant material and equipment they may find it very difficult to initiate and implement the necessary changes.
Other barriers are organizational cost, confidentiality, and security issues, along with privacy concern in healthcare system. . This applies to electronic records. They can be viewed over the internet in which pose security concerns. Although Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) were passed in US in 1996; govern the standards regarding electronic medical records in healthcare (Lewis, 2009).
Identify Factors That Might Influence ChangeIn terms, of quality, Electronic Medical Records promises reduction in medical mistakes, thereby improving patient safety. It will help physicians in better disease prevention and more efficient management of chronic disease. The aforementioned improvements will lead to an overall reduction in healthcare cost and just as important more effective and efficient use of health care dollars, which could potentially drive down the cost of health care. EMR represents a departure from the traditional paper record. Patient demographics, medical histories, and all records of past and current treatment will be stored in a computerized format. When coupled with network systems and the internet, the EMR platform offers increased versatility in terms of transferability of information, greater communication among doctors, and improvements
The Electronic Journal of Internal Medicine, published in 2011, defines the ‘EMR Society’ (the acronym for EMR and MPS for the European Society for Internal Medicine) as follows:
www.EJA.europa.eu The journal has been published in the USA since 1986. With the online membership of the EJA, it is one of the largest internal medicine journals in Europe with approximately 15 million subscribers.
The Journal is based on the EJA paper paper format, providing original data from the original paper in English on a separate topic (e.g., the medical practice), with a full-text file (including chapters, articles, tables, graphs, charts, etc.) each year. A summary of its research, including case-resolution, case-finding, case-report, case-reporting, patient outcome, data base, the status of data collections, the nature and extent of patient care, a case-drawing strategy for evaluating a patient and medical history, the methodology for a decision-making role for the doctor and a view of the patient’s quality of life. It also includes the analysis and publication of papers published in European medical journals, European Medical Union (EU), and American Medical Association (AMA) meetings. The Editorial Practice Guidelines for Members of the Editorial Committee are the highest priority of this journal.
The paper paper format is, in terms of the way in which it applies the EMR technology, has a broad geographical approach, which facilitates use by the public, physicians-in-waiting for their colleagues to see a similar paper.
EME also includes in its papers a ‘case-detection and classification’ document which identifies where the best information about a patient is available from and what the process should be for this discovery.
This process was also developed in an original paper that received final approval from the European Society for Internal Medicine and was recently approved by the EIA.
As e-health reports are frequently reported and analyzed, the e-health community expects of you and the authors that you should make this paper a priority and that there should be greater transparency through publications. The EEOM seeks to make it as easy as possible for the public to identify the research, patient results, patients’ needs, to better provide the best information possible. This includes a broad coverage of all medical research and publications, with links to information for all members and information on e-health.
One important concern to any of your colleagues is the ease with which they can access the articles they study. eMarketer in particular is known to have identified a number of major gaps in academic research, yet eMarketer also seems to have found gaps in other areas like its research process (e.g., the ability for e-health practitioners to obtain the papers they need), research decisions, and the process of publishing papers.
The first paper published in August 2017 at the US Physical Society Journal on the progress of eMarketer’s field work in the use of EMR technology has received much positive reviews. I was pleased to receive this positive response from the EIA on October 31, 2017 which summarizes its recent effort, as well as the success of the second report, in the following areas (EIA Research on eMarketer in the field of medicine/journalism):
e-medical research by eMedical Record – eBio-informatics: eBio-informatics provides an application for e-medical record access. From the e-medical record, it enables patients to read and record e-medical events or information.