Ifsm 305 assignment

Running Head: SHARING CLINICAL DATA

SHARING CLINICAL DATA 7

SHARING CLINICAL DATA

STUDENT’S NAME:

LECTURER:

DATE:

Introduction

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is the computerized storage and sharing of patients’ health information to help in continuous monitoring of the patients’ health (Shickel B., 2017). This is a system developed to enable health clinics share information that can help in providing effective medication to the patients with different kinds of health needs. The data on patients is stored and accessed by the clinics during visits from the patient which will help in care management of the patients. An electronic health record system can be helpful as the information stored consist of medical history of a patient, laboratory tests, treatment plans, immunization dates and various allergies of the patients. This is helpful when the patient visits different clinic health providers where they will not need to explain the situations over and over again.

Electronic health record system automates information sharing and reduces the traditional paper work which was tiresome and had a great risk of losing information. With the HER, information on patients is kept in a secure system where only authorized persons can access it. Errors are minimized in provision of health care since the information kept can be more accurate and available at any given time.

Wasatch Family Clinic will greatly benefit from this strategy of recording, keeping and sharing of information on patients. The nurses can use the system to easily record the patients’ names, numbers and all other critical information required during scheduling for clinical attendance of any patient. Tracing of the information will be easier compared to using the traditional form of papers in storing information for a patient.

Need to share data

Information on health status of a patient has to be kept with care and only authorized persons can be able to access them. This helps in building ethical handling of patients’ information which creates their trust on the health care providers (Drazen J., 2015).

Wasatch Family Clinic needs to share their health data with the patients for them to understand their health issues. The clinic also needs to share data with other health facilities in order to increase the patient’s safety and a great care.

Duplicate registrations will be avoided by sharing data in the different departments of the health care center. A real-time link can be created for the patients from registration, through consultation, testing and final medication. This can save Wasatch family Clinic from traditional paper work which took most time when searching for medical records of a patient at every stage in the clinic. Time can also be saved when the information of the patient is a system shared by the departments of the clinic health center.

Wasatch Family Clinic will also benefit economically when the data is shared improving service time and hence reducing the time patients has to wait before they are served. This increases the number of patients visiting the clinic which will translate to general revenue generation and profit maximizations. This leads to continuous growth of the health care clinic and provision of more services.

Sharing data with other physicians can help in identifying the symptoms Dr. Betts might not be aware of. Some of the specialist in different healthcare providers can offer great solutions to a certain development of any given patient’s symptoms, improving the treatment process of the possible disease.

Data can be shared to identify an outbreak of a given disease. Health researchers can use the data to identify the disease and provide possible solutions to enable saving lives. The characteristics can be counter-checked with previous encounters in order to relate the solutions to the disease.

Types of data to be shared

Data is one of the most critical concerns of any given organization. When the data is acquired by a third party in an unauthorized manner, it can be misused and most likely, it may lead to losses of the breached organization. Every organization should put strategies in place where data can be handled with care to reduce breaching and consequent losses.

Wasatch Family Clinic will need to be selective on information that can be shared to a third party. Authorization of data access can be implemented carefully with the system in order to ensure that only information needed, can be accessed. The clinic needs to share data with laboratories, physician and pharmacy.

The symptoms can be recorded for a patient and shared with the laboratory for the attendant to conduct specified tests for the patient. The results can be shared with the physician or source of the data for further recommendation on medical assessment. Dr. Betts can send data of a patient to the lab specifying the test required which is not available in the clinic.

Prescription can be shared with the pharmacy where the patient can be sent to collect certain medical drugs that are not available in the health center. This can help in provision of great health care for the patients.

Some unique symptoms observed in patients can be shared to physicians and research medical institutions with anonymity to ensure the patient’s confidentiality is observed. These symptoms can be determined in order to identify the disease and possible solutions to save the patients and to curb outbreak that may lead to many losses.

Data Interchange Standards

Although data sharing is vital in the clinic environment, some standards must be observed in order to portray an ethical environment suitable for patients. Data interchange standards include the data to be shared, required interface and format that can be used to share data in a clinical environment. This is important considering the information of a patient has to be secured from unauthorized persons. In the clinical environment, the message to be communicated can be encoded during exchange to ensure that only authorized persons can understand what is communicated.

Health Level Seven (HL7) is used transferring messages of clinic data. Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine can be used to transfer information in form of images (Safety P., 2004). National Council for Prescription Drug programs is used by pharmacists to interchange the data (Vincent C., 2011).

The clinical devices can be design and developed to ensure safe storage of data, transfer and ease usability through observation of standards for human factor design as portrayed in the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) (Vincent C., 2011).

Linking of data in various departments of the Wasatch Family Clinic is vital since it ensures smooth operation and accessibility in other department enabling maintenance and integrity of the data for patients. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) ensured that the patients’ information is linked with other departments ensuring that the confidentiality is observed for the patients’ data.

Summary

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a vital tool in a clinical environment to enable sharing patient data, keeping records and reference of the patients’ information at a given place enable easy management and quick attendance. Wasatch Family Clinic should therefore adopt the strategy to ensure increased treatment options and great revenue generation due to first attendance accrued adoption of the new technology.

Reference

Shickel, B., Tighe, P. J., Bihorac, A., & Rashidi, P. (2017). Deep EHR: a survey of recent advances in deep learning techniques for electronic health record (EHR) analysis. IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics, 22(5), 1589-1604.

Drazen, J. M. (2015). Sharing individual patient data from clinical trials. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(3), 201-202.

Vincent, C. (2011). Patient safety. John Wiley & Sons.

Safety, P. (2004). Achieving a new standard for care. Washington, DC: National Academies of Science.