whether electrical health records were adequate

 whether electrical health records were adequate

The federal government plays a significant role in the health care delivery sector. Congress passes acts and policies that every health care facility should implement. It also outlines the penalties to which the facilities which do not adhere to the policies. One of the federal policies that have had impacts in both public and private health care is the electrical health records (EHR), which was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The policy was meant to ease access to patient’s information through the use of electrical devices such as computers and cloud storage. This paper examines whether electrical health records were adequate.

The federal government wanted by 2015 the policy to have become useful in all states. The federal government set a penalty which would ensure that many states adopt the EHR systems. The health care which would not have implemented would get a 1 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursements. Though health care systems and facilities applied it slowly, EHR has proved to be a significant boost towards patient’s health care.

EHR is essential in storing patient’s information. The information ranges from medical history, personal data regarding health status, insurance details, disease diagnosis and clinic information, test results, immunization status, among other health-related information. Today, almost every health facility has an electrical health records system that they enter clients’ information. Electrical health records prove to be practical and useful to many facilities.

Electrical health records have helped to reduce errors during treatment. A critical feature of EHR is that it can be shared between different health care facilitators. EHR patients’ information is shared with other health care providers like laboratories, other organizations, specialists, pharmacies, medical imaging facilities, workplace clinics and emergency facilities. This feature of sharing information is essential because it increases the high chances of a patient receiving quality and proper health care in any facility that he or she attends.

For instance, if a particular medicine responded negatively in a patient body, a pharmacist who can access the patient’s historical data will not prescribe a similar dose to the patient. EHR systems are even more essential during emergencies when a patient cannot gives information like when he or she is in a comma. Health care facilities will be able to access critical data of the patient like blood group, health status and previously treated disease. This enables them to know how they will administer health care to the patient, saving time and even sometimes saving a life, which would be lost if tests were to be conducted.

EHR systems are beneficial to the health care systems because it increases the efficiency of locating patient’s records. The traditional paperwork records inefficient due to the time taken by record officers to find patient’s files. In some cases, even the files could be misplaced, leading to poor patient health care. This was made possible by the fact that health care facilities received a high number of clients in a single day. For instance, some hospitals receive more than 2,000 a day, and all of them have personal files. This made it challenging to locate reports about all the clients. Furthermore, paperwork records consumed a lot of space in health care facilities. Many health care facilities had to have a room or two to keep records. EHR is efficient as information can be accessed in real-time, with no misplacements of data, and the data can be accessed at any place. EHR system helps to save place and time for searching the paper files.

EHR is essential when it comes to patients who have multiple doctors or who attend numerous health care facilities. The EHR allows doctors to update information whenever a patient visits their hospitals. As a result, when the patient attends a different health facility in the future, the doctor or physician gets updated and accurate information that enables him or her to deliver quality health care to the patient. EHR is also essential when it comes to medications or prescriptions. Electrical prescribing allows doctors to communicate directly to pharmacies for prescriptions. This reduces the errors that were experienced during paper prescriptions. The errors included lost orders and misinterpretations of the same, leading to wrong dosages or wrong medications.

One criticism that has been associated with EHR is on a patient’s confidentiality. There are so many people who, under the policy, will be able to access the information. For instance, physicians, doctors, pharmacists will be able to access a patient’s information. This is likely to increase the chances of accidental and data breaching, thus reducing the patient’s privacy. However, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) states that the patient has the power of who should access his or her EHR information. The Act states that nobody should access a patient’s EHR information without the patient’s consent.

According to the current political climate, I believe there is a high chance of the Affordable Care Act, which was introduced by President Obama being eliminated. The future of ACA is unknown as it faces objection from the Trump government. Led by Texas, there are 20 states which sued the federal government intends to bring down the Act. Furthermore, the Trump government has not been supporting the Act and thus, there are high chances that the Act will be eliminated.