Electronic Health Record (EHR) Bearing the Everyday

Electronic Health Record (EHR)

Bearing the everyday evolution of the technology used in hospitals and the Healthcare sector in general, there is need to understand the concept of EHR. This paper undertakes to divulge what EHR is, the components, the advantages that it brings to the Healthcare department in general as well as the complications or loopholes that may come with it and suggestions on how this system can be used safely without exposing the patients to undue dangers and exposure of private details.

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) can be referred to as a longitudinal electronic record about the health of patients that is gathered by the number of turns that the patient visits a healthcare facility. The information that is included in the EHR is vital pieces of information that can help in the handling of the patient in any part of the state. The information include medications, patient demographics, problems, progress notes, past medical history, vital signs, laboratory data, immunizations as well as radiology reports (Healthcare Information and Management Systems, 2011).

EHR has been very instrumental in the Healthcare field in several ways. One of the significant components of the EHR is the administrative component that comes with it. It enables the registration of patients, the admission to the hospital inpatient care, the discharge as well as the transfer of patients from one hospital to another and has these as the key components. These will enable the health information on an individual to be easily processed for the clinical analysis and research as well (The MITRE Corporation, 2006).

The EHR also aids the clinical procedures in that once it has helped identify the patient, it can as well link all the clinical reports and observations made, the tests, the evaluations, complains by the patient, the procedures used and the diagnosis that was carried out. The EHR is well-known to capture clinical notes, clinical reports and patient assessment. Things like medical administration can now be easily retrieved without going through the carbon copies. The successful implementation of the EHR must be one that corresponds with a redesign of the workflow and buy-in from the numerous stakeholders for the institution to realize the clinical benefits of the EHR. The system streamlines and automates the clinician's workflow. It also enhances evidence-based decision making among the clinicians, outcomes reporting and quality management (Healthcare Information and Management Systems, 2011).

This method also allows for the validation of information and individual identification that gives more access control, reduction in losses and the capability to give reliable services when needed. This ability to authenticate information is a measure against fraudulent activities like counterfeiting and fraud that has in the past led to the use of medical records and profile of an individual by an imposter for their own fraudulent ends (Conrad Artio, 2011).

Bearing that implementation of the EHR is one financially taxing venture, there is also need to know the financial returns that it brings to the Healthcare facilities. In determining the benefits of the system there are those actual costs that can be determined and there are also other benefits that are a bit hard to append monetary value to. Those that one cannot append monetary value to are things like the reduced staff time that they could spend perusing through records in the records store. Some can have monetary value appended to them like evident reduced drug events that could cost the hospital money and even the time to get treatment is reduced hence the facility can serve more patients that was before (Julie J. McGowan et.al. 2008).

There is also the infrastructure aspect of the system it will need physical infrastructure that must be availed like the computers and the servers as well as the backup systems. The sound infrastructure will ensure that the system is up and running and that data contained therein is secure and confidential. The infrastructure should be devoid of any possibility of giving gap for the information about clients to end in the wrong hands.

Some of the challenges that the EHR faces are like the prohibitive cost of implementing most of these technologies makes it difficult for some institutions to afford it say for the entire family; hence there will be a limited application to it. The expense can also be on the family side since it could cost them in a way to have this kind of data storage system.

There are fears that the technology could also leak out the potential weaknesses that the person has and be used by the evil minded people to the detriment of the individual bearer. If an evil minded person gets to know that someone has some health weakness then they may consider using it to the detriment of the individual.

Another setback of this technology in data storage arises from the fact that there is usually the full information of an individual stored in the electronic medium that just needs to be decoded. In such a manner, if there is someone with ill intentions he can easily intercept the information from the chip as it is being processed say by an authorized physician. Consequently this could make the information be used by the wrong person and cause harm later on to the innocent patient bearing the chip (Dick et.al, 2011. Pp 67).