Electronic Health Records Essay

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is famous because it enhances service delivery by disseminating knowledge and awareness among healthcare professionals and patients. The system also fosters collaboration among various public and private organizations that facilitate healthcare delivery.

With the increased adoption of EHR, the service delivery among several hospitals has gone far beyond traditional hospitals in terms of quality and quantity. However, despite the milestones achieved in the healthcare systems through EHR, some studies indicate that EHR acceptability among various healthcare system stakeholders varies.

Thesis Statement

A detailed analysis of this subject indicates that individual, technological and socio-environmental factors influence the adoption and utilization of EHR in healthcare systems.

Individual Factors
Perceived usefulness

Perceived usefulness is the degree to which people believe that using a particular system improves performance. Technological systems such as EHRs are viewed as pivotal elements to streamlining healthcare delivery processes in various ways, including medical error reduction, effective management of disease, giving proven and guideline-based care, and enhancing efficiency (Hossain, Quaresma, & Rahman, 2019; Cowie et al. 2017).

Concerning the reduction of errors, proper treatment of point-of-care information is the fundamental cause of medical errors. When problems are encountered in information access, more dosing errors are likely to emerge at various patient care stages.

Error mitigation is essential not only for patient safety but also for regulatory compliance. When individuals perceive that EHRs are useful in healthcare service delivery, they are more willing to accept it and adopt it and vice versa.

Self-efficacy and perceived ease of use.

Self-efficacy is a personal evaluation of the capacity to use new technology. The ability and familiarity of physicians towards the new technology influence their willingness. Those who find it more challenging to learn new skills of applying EHR in their work are more likely to resist its use at its conception stage and vice versa (Hossain et al., 2019).

Perceived ease of use is the degree to which people believe that using a particular system will be free of effort when applied. In the healthcare system, the perceived ease of use entails the ease of system learning and mastering, clarity and comprehensiveness of the system instructions, system flexibility, and ease of performing tasks with a minimal workload.

Thus, the system complexity, workload impact, and interference with the patient and physicians’ communication reflect the ease of use. Persons with self-efficacy in the new technologies are more likely to accept and utilize EHRs and vice versa. Thus, the perception about self-efficacy and ease of using EHR shapes the healthcare workforce’s attitude towards adopting the technology.

Technology-related Factors
Uncertainties about Efficiency and Longevity

Notably, the pursuit of efficiency is one of the critical objectives of employing technology in organizations. EHRs are seen as ways of enhancing efficiency because they foster fewer resources and save administrative time during documentation and worker output improvement.

Other forms of efficiency include workflow smoothness, speedy organization and retyping of information in the medical records, and quicker retrieval of patient information. Despite these advantages, Cowie et al. (2017) note that the systems’ maintenance costs can be the high factor that may discourage its adoption.

Regarding uncertainty, Evans (2016) contends that new technological developments lead to obsolescence and necessitates new investments in updates and upgrades. Ideally, the perception of how technologies such as EHR are likely to enhance healthcare system efficiency differs among individuals.

Also, the costly promotions and updates of the existing systems resulting from rapidly evolving technologies might be unwelcome to some healthcare organizations, thereby affecting the acceptance of technologies in healthcare systems.

Additional investments

The utilization of EHRs requires healthcare professionals to have computer skills. The workforce must be trained to use new EHRs regularly. A systems officer is employed to supervise the clerks entering information in the computer systems and ensure the data is secure.

The adoption of EHRs requires additional investment in computer skills, not only among the records management departments but also among the staff (Evans, 2016). The necessity to have professionals with skills in managing EHRs is a significant hindrance to the acceptance and adoption of EHRs.

Socio-environmental Factors
The Perceived Threat to Physician autonomy

Characterizing healthcare is professional autonomy. A threat to autonomy entails the degree to which people believe that using a particular system decreases their control over the procedures, processes, or work content. When implementing EHR, substantial changes occur that influence positions or power relations in medical practice (Groseclose & Buckeridge, 2017).

For example, technologies enhance surveillance, which is critical to healthcare service delivery. Yet, according to Eberts & Capurro (2019), some physicians view such administration as an unwarranted encroachment into their professional privacy and relationship with patients. Thus, technologies such as EHRs are less likely to be applied where healthcare professionals and patients believe that technology undermines their privacy.

Group influence

Social influence refers to the degree to which a person perceives that most essential people think they should use the system. Physicians’ norms develop from professional socialization, which implies that their bonds with peers are strong and can shape the perception and adoption of EHRs (Hossain et al., 2019). That is, colleagues’ negative perceptions and decisions towards EHR can have adverse effects on its acceptability and adoption.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, personal, technological, and social factors that affect the acceptance and adoption of EHRs involve integrating into healthcare systems and organizations. The individual factors include perceptions about self-efficacy, ease of use, and usefulness, while the technology related factors include the costs of training personnel to use and manage them. Social factors constitute group influence and perceived threat to autonomy.