Paper Sample on Clinical Health Act/HIT: Revolutionizing EMR/Privacy Protection

Introduction

The Clinical Health Act and the Health Information Technology were laws designed in 2009 to stimulate the initiative packages designed to encourage the use of the medical records systems (EMR) (Gardiner, 2014). Many researchers have focused on the functions of the EMR inkling the clinical decision, health information exchange and computerized entry systems. EMR are systems associated with the privacy information of the patients as elaborated in the information technology for economic and clinical health (HITECH) (Gardiner, 2014). Policymakers and experts state that the benefits of the system to the society and the patient develops when the EMR is adopted and used well the below are the benefits of using EMR. The paper will elaborate more on the benefits of EMR, including the clinical and societal outcomes and the drawbacks associated with the system, including the maintenance costs and disruption to workflows.

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Advantages of EMR’s

They offer financial incentives to the medical producers – medical providers that computerize the manual records with a certified EMR they demonstrate the importance of the government’s law (Taal, 2014). The procedure allows the medical providers to continue and obtain financial incentives like the medicare or Medicaid offer. The government also encourages the use of EMR to facilitate the efficiency of customer service.

Information Is Easy To Document

Majority of the EMR’s have templates that direct the nurses to add specific notes to a patient (Taal, 2014). Due to this, any other doctor can accurately get the information needed about the patient regularly. Even though patients visit the hospital on different occasions, EMR makes it able for the nurse to access the records without losing any data.

Patients Can Access Their Medical Information

With the EMR initiative, online portals have also been developed by medical providers. Such portals have made it easy for patients to access their medical reports anytime they want so long as they have a secure internet connection or data (Taal, 2014). The system also gives ideas to patients when it comes to the treatment plan or the doctors they are supposed to see about their health.

Time Is Saved

EMR saves time to both the medical practitioners and the patient because of the online portal. The reason why it saves time is that patients are allowed to put their data into their records. This is better instead of the traditional ways people used by filling papers before they visit the doctor (Taal, 2014). The method also saves time when it comes to administration work, particularly for medical workers.

Orders Are Initiated Faster

The enablement of the EMR has made doctors place immediate orders for laboratory or imaging work. This makes the information shared to be accurately caused by the doctor’s handwriting (Taal, 2014). Such benefit also makes it easy when it comes to the prescription of medicine because of the electronic system sent to the pharmacy chosen by the patient. The order is usually ready before the client reaches the pharmacy

Billing Is Accurately Done

EMR has made it possible for the patient to capture the bills accurately, similar to the services offered. Even though the system does not allow the patients to view any changes, they can get accurate information from the third-party payers like the insurance companies (Taal, 2014). The method also maximizes the medical provider’s revenues due to transparency.

EMR Can Be Used For Preventive Health

Since doctors can access the patient’s data through the line portal, their health can also be monitored and advised. For instance, a patient that took ten years before going to the hospital can get advice from the doctor on their treatment while checking the previous record electronically (Taal, 2014). Cholesterol testing, cancer screening and other preventive actions can also be monitored and communicated to the patient.

Disadvantages of EMR

EMR can cause violations that can cost from $ 100 to $ 1.5 million when detected or reported (Taal, 2014). When health insurance accountability and portability was first established in 1996, it also initiated the national standards for confidentiality and security. It is wrong for the doctor to disclose the patient’s information to the family (Taal, 2014). When proper training is not conducted, then it is easy for medical practitioners to violate the system by hampering the medical care perceived to be received by the patient. Many compliance and regulatory organizations that comb over every action and word similar to the healthcare facilities end up creating an overhead layer (Taal, 2014).

The Systems are Easily Hacked

In 2017, the Ransomware attackers were initiated because of security problems and malware on electronic medical records (Taal, 2014). This made many hospitals to use a lot of money to solve the issues per incident. The advantages of the Ransomware software is that it encrypts EMR, thus making it inaccessible until the patient pays a ransom amount of money to get the lost data back (Taal, 2014). Still, there is no guarantee that when the money spent will retrieve all the files that were not distributed and copied to other people.

EMR Needs Regular Updates

Similar to other software’s, EMR must be updated because it’s on an electric platform (Taal, 2014). The problem is that not most software creators update. Therefore if the medical provider commands the system that receives infrequent updates, then it will be challenging to get accurate information due to systems errors.

Lack of Access

Even though the specialists have interview rooms that consist of a permanent computer, it then becomes inaccessible for the family and the practitioners (Taal, 2014). For instance, in small medical facilities, doctors have tablets and laptops that they carry around. The challenge develops when the gadget is forgotten at home. This creates gaps in the medical reports of the patients that can turn out to be fatal when wrong treatment is done.

Fixing the System is Expensive

Medical facilities spend a lot of money fixing, training and maintaining the systems (Taal, 2014). Updating the policy is also costly because they have to re-hire IT specialist to make sure that the system is running efficiently.

How the Congress act to Mitigate Risks

One way the congress has done to suppress risk is by reducing competition available to providers to restrict the services offered to patients (Hussain & Qamar, 2016). The policy consists of laws that broaden the scope of practice for providers to improve, encourage innovation, workforce mobility, and allow providers to meet the needs of patients. It is also the role of the Federal Government to streamline the online operation to reduce competition or choices available for the insurance markets (Hussain & Qamar, 2016). The system, therefore, mandates the government to eliminate competition to allow the natural use of the system.

Conclusion

The Clinical Health Act and the health information technology were laws designed the EMR initiative online portals to make the information shared to be accurate. While using the system has various advantages such as saving time, efficiency and proper record keeping, it also has many disadvantages. Some of them include the expense of introducing it to the systems, hacking and upgrading. All in all, the EMR remains the best systems in record keeping and usage.

References

Gardiner, R. C. (2014). Quality considerations in medical records abstracting systems. Journal of Medical Systems, 2(1), 31-43. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02225581

Hussain, F., & Qamar, U. (2016). Identification and correction of misspelled drugs’ names in electronic medical records (EMR). Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, 1(2), 98-105. https://doi.org/10.5220/0005911503330338

Taal, E. (2014). Patient access to online electronic medical records: Advantages, disadvantages and preconditions according to care providers. Rheumatology, 53(suppl_1), i25-i25. https://doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/keu084.002