Informatics Solution Proposal: General Solution
Issue Identification
Patients’ health records have transformed into a critical component of healthcare that impact on quality care and patient outcomes. Healthcare records offer healthcare givers the most reliable source of data to complete multiple functions and purposes. There are numerous professionals in a hospital setting that require to use a patient’s medical record daily.
The EHR system allows nurses, physicians, and other primary caregivers to have complete access to patient information/data contained in a centralized system. The system provides authorized caregivers access to patient records which they use to make informed decisions about treatment plans and patient management.
Impact of EHR on Healthcare
EHR lead to the provisions of quality care. When health care providers have access to complete and accurate information, patients receive better medical care. Electronic health records improve the practitioners’ ability to make correct diagnoses, reduce and even prevent medical errors, ensure patient data confidentiality, and enhance access of patient data for effective and comprehensive care. EHR tool also allows interoperability between different professionals in the medical and nursing industry, thereby improving the quality of patient experiences and outcomes.
Electronic Health Record reduces medical errors. EHR is a recent but critical specialty in nursing. It is a specialty that combines nursing science with nursing information technology to develop systems that improve patient care while reducing medical errors. Patient medical data has emerged as a critical factor in reducing medical errors and improving patient outcomes.
EHR is a branch of technology that allows health facilities to efficiently collect and store patient data/information leading to improved safety, quality of care, and patient outcomes (Shenoy, & Appel, 2017). This nursing specialty is critical to information management system in the medical field as it is the driving force behind development, improvements, and improved decision-making, and better clinical outcomes.
Electronic Health Records improves the quality of decisions made by healthcare providers and givers. Healthcare facilities use data/information from HER systems to make critical decisions about patients and the direction of growth of such facilities. Most importantly, EHR is used to evaluate and measure the performance of all protocols, procedures, policies, and processes in caregiving facilities. For example, it is the responsibility of nursing informaticists to measure the way all specific parts of a healthcare organization are performing with emphasis on patient outcomes (Akhu‐Zaheya et al., 2018).
Based on the performance of each part, nursing informaticists can initiate changes to specific parts to streamline activities. Emphasis is put on eliminating bottlenecks, reducing inefficiencies, and improving the overall care and safety for patients.
Electronic Health Records align nursing best practices with patient outcomes and clinical care. The most critical objective of Electronic Health Records is to improve clinical care and patient outcomes through the adoption of best practices. To achieve excellent clinical care, EHR is critical to processes such as the review of clinical workflow, process designs, creating effective treatment plans based on patient information and data, and developing new diagnostics (Lin, 2019). All these processes have a direct impact on the quality of care given to patients. Electronic Health Records work to improve protocols, policies, procedures, and processes. Many researches by healthcare experts establish that data is the lifeline of any medical facility because all decisions are made using data/information.
References
Akhu‐Zaheya, L., Al‐Maaitah, R., & Hani, S. B. (2018). Quality of nursing documentation: Paper‐based health records versus electronic‐based health records. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(3-4), e578-e589. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14097
Lin, Y. K., Lin, M., & Chen, H. (2019). Do electronic health records affect quality of care? Evidence from the HITECH Act. Information Systems Research, 30(1), 306-318. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0813
Shenoy, A., & Appel, J. M. (2017). Safeguarding confidentiality in electronic health records. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 26(2), 337-341. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0963180116000931