Implementation of Electronic Health Record Systems

Implementation of Electronic Health Record Systems to Prevent Medical Errors

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Implementation of Electronic Health Record Systems to Prevent Medical Errors

The main issue affecting our primary healthcare facility is confusion of patient information. Such information includes but not limited to diagnostics, lab reports, patient history, and medication. The healthcare facility mainly uses paper charts as the main form of sharing patient information among different departments of the facility. Consequently, there have been cases of misdiagnoses, which have negatively impacted on the quality of care and patient care outcomes. In view of these reasons, the institution has resorted to installing electronic health records (EHR) that would synchronize the computers containing patient information not only among the institution’s departments but also allow sharing and retrieving clients’ current and historical health information among different healthcare facilities.

Electronic Health Records (EHR)

Electronic heath record (EHR) is a synchronized electronic system consisting of digital devices that are used by healthcare stakeholders to process clients’ health-related information. The most important function of the data-processes that relate to our healthcare facility include the collection of patient health information such as vital signs, medical history, physician and nurse notes, medication orders, laboratory results, admission information, and radiology reports. The medical errors that often occur can be prevented by the installation of EHR system in our facility. Evidence-based research indicates that EHR’s improve information-sharing processes within healthcare settings, which increases the effectiveness of communication and cooperation among healthcare workers with regard to sharing patient care information (Campanella et al., 2016). Furthermore, EHR increases the accuracy of the information entered in the health information system, and legibility of patient information thereby minimizing the likelihood of misinterpretation and assumptions that contribute to errors that significantly reduce the quality of patient care. The EHR will be implemented systematically in order to ensure that the healthcare workers are familiar with the system, and to obtain the required resources.

Implementation

The implementation process of the EHR will involve a multi-stakeholder engagement in which all internal stakeholders will be notified about the need to embrace the new system. Internal stakeholders, who are basically the healthcare workers in the facility will be informed about the issue of medical errors, and how the EHR system will prevent such errors from occurring. The staff will then be assessed regarding their knowledge of computers and other digital equipment that form the essential components of the EHR system. The staff will then be encouraged to have a positive view of the new system, and a training program will be arranged in which the staff will be trained on how to use the EHR system. Staff training is crucial since lack of technical knowhow on the use of EHR is a major contributing factor for failure of EHR systems (Feldstein et al., 2017). During the training, employees will be advised to seek use additional resources for learning such as online credible databases in order to reduce the training timeline.

As the training continues, the procurement department will conduct a research on the most effective equipment with regard to the ease of use, efficiency, reliability, and cost-benefit analysis. After the required equipment have been purchased, the information technology (IT) manager will then organize for the installation of the equipment, and synchronize the all the computers of the departments in a standardized single-provider health information technology system (HITS) (Moja et al., 2016). In so doing, all the departments will be able to record, process, retrieve, receive, and send patient information within the facility, which will increase the accuracy and speed of processing patient data thereby increasing the quality of patient care processes and treatment outcomes.

During the installation process, there are key considerations that have to be met. They include inclusion of administrative components such as patient admission and information transfer across the facility’s departments. Laboratory components such as test orders, results, and billing information; and radiology components such as orders, results, and billing have to be installed in the server computer (Moja et al., 2016). The pharmacy department will require an automated entry especially on prescription drugs since issuance of wrong medication is a common error that often occurs in the institution. Additionally, the electronic physician order entry (EPOE) has to be checked to ensure that it is compatible with the integration of other departments since its function carries patient history, and diagnosis information that sets the criteria of operation of other departments such as the laboratory and pharmacy (Campanella et al., 2016). The document repository and compliance checker have to function efficiently since they facilitate information generation and cost related information, and the quality of care that are used by third parties such as insurance companies and the government. The system will then be tested to check for flaws, and ease of use by the healthcare workers so that changes can be made in the aspects of the system that do not work optimally.

Evaluation

The effectiveness of the EHR system will be evaluated according to its ease of use by healthcare workers, the efficiency of the machines with regard to functionality aspects, accuracy of the information transferred among departments, and the time taken to treat patients. From time to time, it is necessary to check on the computers used by healthcare workers in different departments to check for errors and difficulties experienced when entering, sharing, and retrieving patient information (Moja et al., 2016). The efficiency of the system will be determined by the degree to which the system crushes, hangs, or returns error reports when in use, and the length of time that the component machines take before they start experiencing difficulties. Furthermore, the time taken to serve one patient using the EHR system can be used as an indicator of the system’s efficiency as the new system is expected to reduce the overall time taken to serve patients (Feldstein et al., 2017). The number of errors, patient satisfaction, and feedback from the staff and patients will also be analyzed to evaluate the system’s effectiveness in reducing medical errors.

References

Campanella, P., Lovato, E., Marone, C., Fallacara, L., Mancuso, A., Ricciardi, W., & Specchia, M. L. (2016). The impact of electronic health records on healthcare quality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The European Journal of Public Health, 26(1), 60-64.

Feldstein, D. A., Hess, R., McGinn, T., Mishuris, R. G., McCullagh, L., Smith, P. D., … & Mann, D. (2017). Design and implementation of electronic health record integrated clinical prediction rules (iCPR): a randomized trial in diverse primary care settings. Implementation Science, 12(37), 1-11.

Moja, L., Passardi, A., Capobussi, M., Banzi, R., Ruggiero, F., Kwag, K., … & Vespignani, R. (2016). Implementing an evidence-based computerized decision support system linked to electronic health records to improve care for cancer patients: the ONCO-CODES study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. Implementation Science, 11(1), 153-179.