Nr 599 Week 3 Assignment

NR 599 WEEK 3 ASSIGNMENT WK. 3 Assignment: Pros and Cons EHR Pros of EHRs Cons of EHRs • Improvements in quality of care (Menachemi & Collum, 2016). This aspect of the EHR allows real time results, information, and reduces redundant care. Additionally, it allows for patient safety by ensuring correct patient and medications and doses are given, cross references interactions of prescribed medications, as well as patient vitals to support the medication. Additionally, by having access to the EHR, it is saving time allowing the nurse to be more interactive with the patient, making connections, thus promoting person centered care. • Reduction in medical & medication errors (Menachemi & Collum, 2016). Within the EHR functions provide pertinent patient information that is not always disclosed during an examination or health history. With the technology of CDS & CPOE these aspects assist the provider to make decisions regarding patient care. it enables providers to not “miss” aspects of care that could potentially harm the patient. It assists in ensuring complete necessary decisions are made. It promotes adherence to the clinical guidelines. • Computerized alerts pertaining to condition after data is input into the system relating to potentially deadly conditions such as sepsis, MI’s, critical lab values etc. (Menachemi & Collum, 2016). The interruption of clinical data and consequential analysis assists the RN and MD to conditions that might not be suspected or potentially missed. This allows for at most a consideration of the potential of a life threatening condition to progress or be missed by the medical providers. This provides quick real time analysis and subsequently improves patient outcomes. • Allows for the sharing of patient information and access to real time up to date medical condition and treatments at the time and place it is needed. According to Menachemi & Collum (2016) “ HIE facilitates the exchange of this information via EHRs, which can result in much more cost effective and quality of care (p. 48). By having access to this real time information it allows the provider to compare and contrast the patients baseline to current presentation. This is vital when a patient condition could deteriorate and without timely access to this real time data could negatively effect and potentially result in patient harm. • Cost of the EHR (upfront and maintenance). When one considers the cost of startup, training, maintenance, conversion of paper chart to electronic there is a vast expanse to either the hospital system or the providers implanting the EHR. It is estimated that first year costs after initial set up amounted to $17, 100, per physician in a practice of five (Menachemi & Collum, 2016). Additionally, this could result in a loss of productivity as individuals even with training are unfamiliar training cannot anticipate every situation that might arise for an unfamiliar user resulting in disruptions of workflow. • Patient privacy violations related to breeches in the system and noncompliance by healthcare workers ( Menachemi & Collum, 2016). Employees must take extra precautions to maintain privacy as a patients full medical history and condition can be made available as well as patient information such as social security number, phone number, address and so forth. Taking time to ensure to not leave screens up, locking workstations, portable workstations are utilized safely and so forth. It is much easier to access all patient information. Additionally, as employees in a hospital rely heavily on email communication, if a wrong email is opened, it leaves the entire medical operating system and programs open to breeches by hackers and outside entities. This has the potential to be devastating for patient safety. • Reliance on technology ( Menachemi & Collum, 2016). As the expanse of the EHR, COPE, alerts to patient condition and suggestions become more commonplace; it can cause a provider to become dependent on this analysis to drive care. less time is spent at the bedside for assessments and results in a loss of critical thinking. Providers can oftentimes adopt the practice of treating the computer or technology vs. the patient. This can result in unnecessary test, dx, and treatments. This not only places the provider at a disadvantage and is bad medicine but results in unfounded costs by the patient. For example, if a patient comes in tachycardic and febrile, which is a physiological response to fever, these two data points will flag a patient for sepsis. If the provider chooses to treat the monitors and technology vs. what they are seeing, this can result in the patient receiving unfounded medical treatments, which the costs could incur on the patient, as well as potential side effects of the treatment itself such as fluid overload in a patient that is not septic but rather has a viral illness. Reliance on these analysis takes the critical thinking and training out of medicine.