Week one discussion and response

Answer

Discussion question (outcome 6):

Health Information Technology System

Health information technology systems are important tools in the healthcare system that help in managing health related tasks and patients’ information (Mason, 2016). Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a form of health information system that digitizes patients’ medical history and treatment records, enabling easy access of patients’ records across multiple health care settings. According to Campanella et al. (2015), EHRs are built to enable sharing of patient records with other authorized healthcare facilities and providers such as specialists, pharmacies, workplace clinics, and laboratories. EER contains multiple information that include family history, immunization status, contact information, medication lists, hospitalization records, allergies, radiology images treatment plan, and laboratory tests results. Additionally, EHR allows sharing of this information across authorized health care professional through network-connected information systems.  When compared with paper-based records system, the EHR is much more transparent, portable and easier to access. This paper aims at examining on how the EHR improves health care outcomes in health care organizations. As the paper suggests, EHR has greatly improved health outcomes attributed to advanced and safer care to patients through effective diagnosis, decision making and reducing medical errors.

EHR has largely impacted on provision of patient-centered care system across health care settings. Campanella et al. (2015) claims that EHR’s ability to automatically share multimedia information like medical image results as well as patients’ information has greatly impacted on provision of quality health care. EHR has enabled healthcare professional to provide advanced and safer care to patients by fostering effective diagnosis, decision making and reducing medical errors. Campanella et al (2015) argues that EHR has upgraded the documentation system by promoting legible, precise and rationalizes coding and billing. Through the system, the patients’ data privacy and security has been improved. Further, the system promotes more dependable prescribing, and generally improves patient-provider relationships. Another benefit of EHR is that it helps reduce operation cost attributed to reduced paper work, decreased replication of testing, improved treatment outcomes and advanced care provision.

The health care agency that I work for has adopted EHR system which has helped streamline operation across departments in the facility. From my assessment, EHR has fostered improved productivity, enabled my organization meet its business goals as well as promoted employer-employee relationships. Among the employees, the system has facilitated effective provision of care to patient, improved work-life balance and enabled us to achieve our business goals. Further, the system has helped the organization meet the consumers’ needs by promoting privacy and security of the patients’ information, improving diagnosis and treatment results and reducing costs of care. Also the Electronic Health Record has enabled the organization to save of costs through improved safety, reduced paperwork, decreased replication of laboratory tests and enhanced care.

The use of EHR goes far beyond the workstation, but rather can be accessed through personal computers and mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. A key feature that improves health outcomes is the Personal Health Records (PHR) that enables access of individual notes to authorized consumers (Pennathur, 2015). Therefore, EHR system has enhanced the provision of patient-centered care hence improving health care outcomes across the healthcare system.

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