Analysing EMR Implementation for Rural Area

Implementing an EMR In A Rural Setting Feasibility There is no setting that an EMR would be most beneficial than a rural setting. Rural settings need the best technology to support physicians in their job performance. This is because rural settings have limited physicians and the few available are usually overworked. The costs for implementing the solution are negligible compared to the benefits that the health care facility will gain from an EMR. Considering that this will be done for a single provider, it is quite feasible.

This is because the solution will be targeted towards the particular provider and they will get a solution that will handle their exact needs. Access to the medical records will be streamlined and cases of illegal access will be eliminated. Implementing an EMR at a rural setting has a higher chance of success as compared to the same in an urban area (Haggstrom et al., 2019). This could be based on the decision-making process of the rural setting.

The amount of changes that would be required is reduced since the rural setting does not require too many modifications of the system. While implementing the system might be tough it is actually easy to implement it in a rural setting since most providers have no other systems that will need to integrate with the EMR. Challenges A majority of rural hospitals do not have computers in all the departments of the hospital.

This means that the employees are not familiar or comfortable working with computers, which would make the adoption of the EMR an uphill task. Getting the buy-in from hospital staff might be another challenge. With employees who are used to doing things in a particular way, it becomes hard to make changes that they would accept (Jawhari, Ludwick, Keenan, Zakus, & Hayward, 2016).

Without proper education on the benefits that the employees will gain from the new system, they will resist it and most of them would still continue to use the old manual ways. Rural hospitals cannot afford to make an error in the selection of the EMR solution. Since they have minimal technology budgets, rural hospitals have to ensure that the solution they select will be suitable for their practice. In case of any issues, the hospital might be unable to meet its daily requirements and activities might slow down considerably.

There might be a lack of trust in the system. If physicians and clinical staff do not trust the system, they will rarely use it and this could lead to failure of implementation. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that the physicians and clinical staff are well involved before the application is implemented. Benefits Improved patient care. With the real-time access of medical records including laboratory and radiology results, patient care is improved.

The more information that the physician has at his or her fingertips the more efficient they will be in delivering the best care to the patient. Retrieval of information is faster and this can also improve the delivery of treatment. Physical storage space is reduced. When compared to paper records, digital space is substantially lower and this can free up space for the addition of other offices or wards. According to Haggstrom et al. (2019) the filing of patient information is systematic and can easily be accessed by authorized individuals.

Adding information does not require that the staff member.