...For the past thirteen years, I have worked in healthcare administration. Five years were spent working in Managed Care and the other eight has been spent working in information technology. Over these thirteen years, I have witnessed a lot changes and growth with healthcare becoming acclimated with incorporating information technology into its workflow. In my current role as a project manager, I have been in charge of implementing several information technology projects that will enhance the way physicians and nurses care for their patients. For a hospital, its main goal is caring for their patients. Day in and day out, hospital workers continuously strive to improve the safety and quality of care for their patients. Research has proven that when certain types of information technology, such as CPOE (computerized physician order entry), computerized decision support systems, barcode scanning for medication administration, computerized health care records, can decrease human error and improve care and efficiency. Hospitals have long been pioneers in incorporating IT to improve patient care, quality, and efficiency. The current challenge now is to extend the use of information technology and integrate it into the routine care processes in all hospitals, both big and small, and in rural and urban areas. Hospitals who are interested in developing electronic medical records and other health information systems must overcome quite a few barriers to actually implementing these...
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...possible consequences of the act/s, which could include expulsion from Indiana Wesleyan University. Thesis The health care industry each years spends millions in medication errors that could be prevented. By implementing a data entry system that would allow access by medical professionals and pharmacies to collaborate and reduce the chance of medication errors dramatically. The data systems are pricy but when compared to the cost of medication errors and loss of lives it saves most medical establishments money. Annotated Bibliography The need for data entry systems to reduce medical errors Rinda, J. (2012). integration helps clinicians reduce medication errors. Health Management Technology , 33 (10), 12-13. With the risks of medication errors endangering lives, the technology has been gearing towards linking smart infusion pumps with health information platforms. Electronic health records have already been developed and are currently being used in some areas. This can lead to reductions in health care costs and increase in workflow. The medication errors could result in 400,000 preventable injuries each year. 1.5 million errors occur in the U.S. each year, resulting in $77 billion in cost annually. The iv integration system which is a form of the medication entry system, resulted in no iv related medication errors within the first 90 days used at Lancaster General Hospital. With the right implementation any healthcare would be able...
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...Analysis of Health Management Systems and Electronic Health Records Epic Patients benefit in many ways from Epic. First, patient safety is enhanced with computerized physician-order entry. Epic has clinical decision support built in that alerts physicians during the ordering process. For example, if a patient is allergic to penicillin and the physician places an order for a drug containing penicillin, an alert will pop up to warn the physician the patient is allergic to the drug. Physician orders are legible and immediately available to the pharmacy, lab, and caregivers. Patients have fewer delays in getting medication or tests because orders are transmitted directly to all areas. There are many safety checks in the medication administration process using bar-code medication administration. All medications have a bar code on them, as do patient armbands. Before giving a medication, the nurse will scan the drug and the patient’s armband. The Epic system will check to make sure that medication is ordered for that patient, and if not, a warning pops up to say the medication is not ordered. Comprehensive discharge instructions called the “after-visit summary” are created throughout the patient’s stay from documentation from all providers. The summary contains information about follow-up appointments and specific information about home medications. A physician can access a patient’s medical record from any computer connected to the Internet to have complete...
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...Describe the benefits that information management and electronic information systems brings to delivery of informed, safe, and quality healthcare. Discuss how healthcare informatics might be integrated into the pre-licensure nursing curriculum. Provide two examples of teaching strategies utilizing the following: Electronic health record as a learning tool A teaching strategy from the QSEN project specifying a specific student assignment relevant to nursing informatics. Conclude your discussion with a well-developed reflection on the significance of healthcare informatics to 21st century nursing education. In response to the Institution of Medicine call to improve the quality of healthcare the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) initiative was started. The QSEN initiative consisted of the development of quality and safety competencies that serve as a resource for nursing faculty to integrate contemporary quality and safety content into nursing education. Nurses are on the front line of patient safety. It is important for the nursing profession to realize all the benefits healthcare informatics can offer to ease their jobs and improve patient safety. Introducing health care informatics into the nursing curriculum will prepare the student for new and innovative technologies on the horizon in the healthcare community. Safety benefits are consistent with the use electronic health record. If electronic medical records are being used by the nurse, the physician is using...
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...Create a written proposal for a new information management system Project: Electronic Medical Record System Upgrade Prepared for: Western Governors University Hospital Prepared by: Emilie Reid, RN Western Governors University Hospital is in need of implementing an electronic medical record (eMAR) system. Currently they are using a paper documentation system. The two systems currently being considered are Meditech and Epic. This proposal will compare both systems to explore which will be selected and the most practical for Western Governors University Hospital to adopt. The current hospital record management system is paper based requiring several paper forms containing various information from different interdisciplinary teams incorporated from a patients history of hospital stays. Often, forms are not updated to reflect current patient information, lost between departments or vital information is not correctly incorporated. It is also common practice that multiple copies of the same information exist within the hospital setting posing a risk for inconsistencies of data sources. Within a hospital setting it is imperative that procurement, management and recovery of large volumes of information be easily accessible to anyone with direct medical contact with a patient. Such information would include; patient medical and personal information, health history, staff information, medications, allergies, labs and testing results as well as physician consultations. This...
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...legal record of care and how the patient responds to the type of care which they received. By documenting, the physicians and nurses are giving written communication to those who provide follow up care. When the nursing staff begins their shift, the nurse gives a report of their previous shift’s activities. For example; the night nurse gives the day nurse reports on each patient. Without these verbal reports the nurses, Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) would need to read each individual patient’s chart to see what happened on the previous shift, this would take away valuable time from the patient and could lead to negative patient care. By using documentation this type of communication provides a legal record of care for each patient. The LTC facility uses several documents to monitor each resident’s care and the outcomes from the care. Each resident also has a personal medical record (PMR) these record contain the resident’s medical, family, social history, assessments, dietary needs, treatment plans, orders, prescriptions, progress notes, and lab results. With this chart the LTC has a complete and accurate look into each individual resident and their medical history and progression of care. Included in their record the, Medication Administration Record (MAR) this is used to document the time, dose, how and when it was administered by the nurse. This record also provides communication in regards to new physician orders, which would include changes for a new medication or discontinuation...
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...Flowchart for Inpatient Medication Administration Name: Institutional Affiliation: Flowchart for Inpatient Medication Administration Introduction The medication administration process has a direct impact on the patient’s health and well-being. The evaluation of the medication administration workflow is crucial to ensure that the right procedure is utilized to offer quality care. The proper design of the process makes sure that there is provision of safe, efficient, prompt, and patient-centered care. Also, there is the elimination of cases of medication administration errors in hospitals through the appropriate workflow design. The application of technological elements in the process with proper integration serves to enhance...
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...can help nurses, but also how these systems can possibly increase and improve patient involvement of care. Computerized management systems can amazingly increase the quality of patient care, as well as safety for the patients. Electronic Medical Records aid nurses in being able to identify if a patient may have an allergy to a medication that will be given. As a nurse, you may not always know if a certain antibiotic is in the same class as an allergy that the patient may have. If the patient does have an allergy, there will be a warning that will pop up for you to view. If the provider approves this patient to have the medication, it may be given, but the pop up is there for patient safety and for the nurse’s own awareness as well. These systems can also help increase quality of care because they will make the patients feel safer. When in nursing school you are always taught the six rights of medication administration. When using the computer charting system, you will definitely follow all six of these rights. You have to scan the medication, after you scan the medication you will compare the route that you have in hand, to the route that is showing in the computer. Next you will want to make sure that you are giving the medication at the correct time, or...
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...Reducing Medication Errors In Hospitals Patient centered care and patient safety are the most important roles in nursing. “Serious medication errors are common in hospitals and often occur during order transcription or administration of medication” (Poon et al., 2010. p. 1). According to Seibert (2014), medication errors and related deaths cost the health care system billions of dollars yearly and that at least one error a day happens in all hospitals. “An estimated 450,000 adverse drug events medication errors that result in patient harm occur annually, approximately 25% of which are preventable” (Seibert, 2014. p. 1). One important aspect of nursing is drug administration. It is a multidisciplinary task including doctors, pharmacist...
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...The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a electronic record of patient health information generated by one or more encounters in any care delivery setting. Included in this information are patient demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports. The EHR automates and streamlines the clinician's workflow. The EHR has the ability to generate a complete record of a clinical patient encounter as well as supporting other care-related activities directly or indirectly including evidence-based decision support, quality management, and outcomes reporting. A government-sponsored survey of the use of computerized patient records by doctors points to two seemingly contradictory conclusions, and a health care system at odds with itself. Skip to next paragraph A government-sponsored survey of the use of computerized patient records by doctors points to two seemingly contradictory conclusions, and a health care system at odds with itself. The report, published online on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that doctors who use electronic health records say overwhelmingly that such records have helped improve the quality and timeliness of care. Yet fewer than one in five of the nation’s doctors has started using such records. Bringing patient records into the computer age, experts say, is crucial to improving care, reducing errors and containing costs in the American health care...
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...Dallas is CareConnect. CareConnect is used by all of the Texas Health Resources (THR) encompassing 25 hospitals, affiliated physician offices, and ancillary facilities. CareConnect allows physicians and management to access the system on their mobile devices and home computer for real time data. The shift for CIS is set for implementation throughout the United States by 2015. The clients served are those in the community that THR provides healthcare services to. The electronic health record is shared amongst the healthcare team and other affiliates. Data collection can be continuously updated, used for “statistical evaluation for purposes of quality improvement, outcome reporting, resource management, and public health surveillance.”(Yamada, 2008, p. 5). Data collection is generally initiated in the ER, and other times when the patient is at the physician's office or in the outpatient service line. To reference inpatient services, data collection begins in the ER. The patient's allergies, current medications, medical history, vital signs, immunizations, suicide screening and domestic violence screening are all obtained upon the patient's arrival to the ER. The gathering of this information, initiates a process for interdisciplinary data collection. All healthcare team members can access a patient’s previous visits whether it is outpatient, inpatient, diagnostic or office visit. Labs and radiological tests are shown by date and time and are listed in chronological order...
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...increase and the medication administration at a 4% increase per department have seen the largest growth. This increase in department use also reconfirmed by the department’s plans to purchase and their intended use for the bar code technology. With the largest increase at 75%, the organization’s medication administration was the largest intended purchase plan for bar code implementation. The next largest department with a to plan to purchase the bar code system is the pharmacy...
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...In the ever-changing world of the “world-wide web,” healthcare is in the forefront of innovative computerized management systems and the provision of excellence in quality care is dually the journey and goal to enhance patient safety. Before venturing out this journey, it is of importance to understand the ‘why’ and the “how” and “what” will come naturally in succession. The patient is the “why” clinical information transformation is the push for all care providers within the four walls of a hospital, and private and satellite physician offices. Patient safety is the shared vision why pioneers of Health Information Technology (HIT) created computerized systems such as Electronic Health Record to meet the demands of healthcare today and tomorrow. As an example, Cerner Corporation and Dell Corporation- two big giants in the IT industry- are in a continuum to enhance their products and services. In addition, these products, services, and “solutions” are the “platform” that shell the delivery of safe patient outcomes and equip multi-disciplinary clinicians to guide and drive this patient-centered care; best practice and evidenced-care medicine is now the expected and standard of care for what is right for the patient. Furthermore, the present millennial generation drives or is driven by the “cloud’ world and the product is fast and smart, safe and secure, information gathering and sharing that is access anytime and anywhere. For example, a mobile device- IPhone- allows...
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...ERMA: Electronic Record Management Application Stacey N. Tucker DeVry University Table of Contents Section Page Number Introduction 3 The Creation, Birth, and Development of ERMA 4 Legal Aspects 5 Strengths of Vizion 7 Weaknesses of Vizion 8 Strengths of ERMA 9 Weaknesses of ERMA 10 Recommendations for Improvement 11 Conclusion 12 Terminology 13 References 14 ERMA: Electronic Record Management Application ERMA, or the Electronic Record Management Application, was designed and developed by Correct Care Solutions for use in correctional facilities across the country. Used primarily in the ambulatory setting and clinics within correctional facilities. ERMA was primary created, and copyright protected for Correct Care Solutions in 2011 and since has been implemented in over two hundred correctional facilities. In 2013, the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center underwent a change of contract, this meant that their medical department was no longer ran by Correctional Health Care, and as such was no longer privy to their current electronic health record Vizion. The conversion from Vizion to ERMA would end up taking almost 2 full years to be put into full effect. The program implementation was meant with many challenges, these included both legalities and overall functionality. Compared to its predecessor ERMA is was still in its infancy and had a long way to go before it would...
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...Technology and Healthcare Administration Warren Thomas Kaplan University HS290-01 Technology and Healthcare Administration As technology continues to improve and become more cost effective, how providers store and access their patient’s medical records has evolved. Many providers now opt for electronic records. Some providers enter information directly into their systems, having a computer station in each exam room. Other providers will hand write on paper forms and will have them coded later. This can sometimes cause delays in the update of the medical records. Each record keeping system has its own benefits and issues unique to it. For electronic records, the first benefit is a reduction of cost in record keeping. While there is an initial cost of implementing an electronic filing system, the cost of these systems will be less in the long run. Less time will be required to manage, file, and maintain the records. This time savings can allow doctors to see more patients and can even reduce the number of employees required to run a clinic. There is, however, a learning curve when using electronic records. Not only will the entire staff need to be trained when a new system is emplaced, new employees who may be veterans of the healthcare fields will need training. Even someone experienced with electronic records may have to learn a new system when changing job. Adding to the cost savings, storage space will also be reduced. Since healthcare providers are required...
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