Process of Care Paper

New Technology Interview: EHR Systems

Kendra Smith

Grand Canyon University HCA 675

March 28, 2018

The process of integrating an electrical health record system (EHR) was influenced by a number of aspects that aimed at making service delivery to the patients more effective and efficient. To start with, this system aimed at improving the participation of the patients in making decisions on their healthcare. Previously patients were not being involved in the decision-making process and at times they felt left out when it came to matters patterning their well-being. Therefore the implementation of this new system would help the patients in the decision making process (Thakkar, & Davis, 2006). Moreover, the implementation of this new system would help in defining the essential information needed for patient treatment. In some cases, it was evident that there was the duplication of various information affecting the patients. This new system would help reduce the aspect of data duplication and only deal with the necessary data needed for a particular treatment. The traditional systems for storing patients’ records were not in a position to offer data security. This means that the information of the patients was not safe and this could interfere with the integrity of the client’s information. However, the implementation of the EHR would help deal with the aspect of information security by providing secure infrastructures that can hold the information of the patient without the risk of information breaches. Additionally, the implementation of this system would help to deal with the challenge of information sharing. Therefore, the implementation of this system would ease the sharing of information and thus make the process of decision making it easier (Weaver, Ball, Kim, & Kiel, 2016).

The implementation of this system followed a number of processes that ensured that the system was well implemented. To start with, the readiness to adopt this system was assessed. This aimed at ensuring that the implementation of the system will create the much-needed change in this institution. Moreover, the assessment phase also involved assessing what was already working well and what was to be improved. In order to transition the leadership team evaluated the clinical goals, financial abilities of this clinic and also its current needs. This stage was followed by envisioning the future state of this system. In particular, aspects such as the impact of this system on the patients were assessed. Additionally, it was expected that the new system would have an impact on the providers in future, therefore it was necessary to look into the possible impact the system will have on the providers. Lastly, the staff members were also expected to be impacted by this system in one way or another. This made it impossible to ignore the expected impact on members of staff, therefore, for this reason, an analysis was conducted to assess the impact of this system on the members of staff. Before, the implementation of this project it was essential to set goals, these particular goals were documented in order to assist in the implementation of the system throughout its various phases of implementation. The goals were set while putting into consideration the most important areas of implementation in order to assist the members of staff with the transition process (Beatty,et al,2015).

After the assessment of the system, a designated team was formulated to spearhead the implementation of the system . The team consisted of members that can be described as being strong advocates of change. The development of such a team was done in order to ensure that the system would be implemented within the set time frame. Moreover, a unified vision was established that was used to design the roadmap to achieving the objectives and goals of this project (Lorenzi, Kouroubali, Detmer, & Bloomrosen, 2009).

In a different case, the leader of this project would ensure that all the employees are considered before implementing such a system. Involving all the employees would ensure that all the concerns of the employees are addressed before the use of the system is initiated. Moreover, the leader would ensure that the aspect of technical support is continuous, this would ensure that the employees feel supported and also protected from any problems that may arise from the implementation of this new system.

There are a number of mistakes that the health care leader did , to start with the leader did not put into consideration the legal complications associated with the implementation of the EHR system. Despite, the fact that this system has the ability to improve the safety of the patient, the system faces a number of legal barriers that may interfere with the implementation of such systems. Putting these legal complications into considerations would have helped to ease the implementation process . Additionally considering these considerations could have been used as a shield against any lawsuits that may emerge due to the failure of such a system. One of the major aspects of the legal precedents is that the providers of these health services have the role of ensuring that they reduce risk during the phase of transition. Additionally, looking into these legal considerations was important because the hospital could have been able to find a reference in case the HER system had taken longer to be installed. An extended timeline for the installation of the system would have meant that aspects such as decision making would have been affected and this could have delayed service delivery to the patients and thus causing major inconvenience. Therefore, legal considerations are important as they can help the providers deal with such instances.

Additionally, the leader was not in a position to consider the risks that may be associated with medical errors. The use of the EHR system may interfere with the decision-making process and this may undermine the ability of the providers to make decisions . This means that the use of EHR may lead to possible errors that may occur during the decision making process. Such errors may expose the patients to health risks and this may lead to legal problems. Moreover, such errors may expose the patient to wrong dosages and also wrong treatment. In order to deal with the risks of medical errors, the leader could have looked into the risks that may be associated with the use of the EHR system.

References

Beatty, P. C., Bercovitz, A., Jamoom, E., Palso, K., Rechtsteiner, E. A., & Woodwell, D. A. (2015). Physician adoption of electronic health record systems; United States, 2011.

Lorenzi, N. M., Kouroubali, A., Detmer, D. E., & Bloomrosen, M. (2009). How to successfully select and implement electronic health records (EHR) in small ambulatory practice settings. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 9(1), 15.

Thakkar, M., & Davis, D. C. (2006). Risks, barriers, and benefits of EHR systems: a comparative study based on size of hospital. Perspectives in Health Information Management/AHIMA, American Health Information Management Association, 3.

Weaver, C. A., Ball, M. J., Kim, G. R., & Kiel, J. M. (2016). Healthcare information management systems. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Kendra, good attempt to this assignment but it is not clear that you conducted an interview. You did not name the person whom you interviewed or her leadership role. Furthermore, you did not reference the personal communication according to APA guidelines. In addition, you did not describe if it was Epic or Cerner the facility implemented. I recommend in future you follow the assignment guidelines specifically. Nevertheless, you generally, adhered to APA guidelines and you have no spelling or grammar errors. Please see my comments inserted in your paper. Continue to work hard.

Radha

�Good thesis statement Kendra.

�Kendra this is an interview assignment. Who did you interview and what is the name of the a new technology you would be discussing? You should have introduced the reader to theses concepts in the introduction.

�What system?

�Kendra did you conduct an interview?

�Who was the healthcare leader?

�Need a reference to support this information.

�EHR.

�Unclear to the reader. Scanning medications is built into the electronic health record.

�Kendra, there is no conclusion to this paper.